East Asian psychometric variance
Asian-White IQ variance from PISA results:
The NE Asians performed about .5 SD better on average (consistent with IQ test results), and exhibited similar (slightly higher) variance.Interestingly, the Finns performed quite well on the exam, posting a very high average, but their SD is slightly smaller. The usual arguments about a (slightly) “narrow bell curve” might apply to the Finns, but apparently not to the NE Asians.
Read the whole post to see if you follow the logic of the inferences; I’ve done some digging on this before to spot check the Europeans-higher-variance meme and didn’t find much to support it, and some data to disprove it (though you could explain away that data because of clumping of distinct populations, etc.). That’s the main reason I get irritable whenever this meme pops up in the comments, it’s one of those “facts” which exhibits circular citation dynamics and spreads like wildfire. Of course, it isn’t as if the meme is totally emerging out of a vacuum: if East Asians are so smart why aren’t they as scientifically creative??? It seems to me that the most plausible explanation has to be that individual intelligence isn’t sufficient for intellectual creativity, though it is likely a necessary precondition. Some of the other variables might be rooted in individual psychology (personality), but I suspect others manifest on a larger scale (e.g., the top-down paternalism and emphasis on conformity which is the norm in most East Asia societies).
Labels: human biodiversity, IQ
I don’t think the answer to “Why Asians Lag” is cultural. East Asians have had plenty of time to produce a da Vinci or Euler and have not done so. East Asians also lag badly behind whites in terms of Nobel prizes. The answer must be genetic.
Perhaps verbal IQ, where East Asians score lower and Jews the highest, is more essential for abstract thinking, genius, and creativity than visuospatial intelligence.
It would be interesting to see whether whites have higher *verbal* IQ variance than East Asians. I would not be surprised if the East Asian overall IQ variance is explained by greater variance in terms of visuospatial intelligence but verbal IQ is still lagging.
I don’t think the answer to “Why Asians Lag” is cultural. East Asians have had plenty of time to produce a da Vinci or Euler and have not done so. East Asians also lag badly behind whites in terms of Nobel prizes. The answer must be genetic.
if the culture emphasizes conformity to the point of squelching creativity wouldn’t that suppress creativity? it isn’t as if there hasn’t been variance over time in intellectual production by greeks, italians, french, germans, etc. the most common explanations for these changes are that cultural conditions have had an effect on modulating the expression of intellectual culture. even if a group, such as the ashkenazi, have an innate advantage that’s totally irrelevant unless you have an appropriate cultural context, something the ashkenazis did not have for the vast majority of their history. i doubt that cultural outlooks can be changed easily from the top-down, as some east asian societies are attempting to do in terms of fostering more individualism and creativity by fiat. of course, something i didn’t mention is the likelihood that differences in genetics could make some cultural outlooks more likely than others….
(the “have had plenty of time” seems like a really ridiculous point. most societies, including european ones, have been totally uncreative and unproductive compared to what western europeans have done over the past 5 centuries)
I would not be surprised if the East Asian overall IQ variance is explained by greater variance in terms of visuospatial intelligence but verbal IQ is still lagging.
of course you wouldn’t be surprised. nor are you inclined to dig into the psychometric research and see if your hunches have any support. no point in wasting time when you can speculate and offer your opinions.
p.s. i don’t want to close this thread due to flaming. but i will unless the comments aren’t a little more well thought out in terms of fleshing out the logic beyond ex cathedra pronouncements than the one above. citations of literature would be nice, or at least something like what steve hsu did in his post. otherwise we’re going to devolve into the endless circle-jerks of dueling assertions.
Despite razib’s warning, some people continue equating creativity to intelligence.
Novel idea is not necessary smart idea. People full of novel idea are creative.
JBS: There is no verbal component in the PISA exams, but there is a test of reading comprehension. If you look at the data (I know, why do it when you can just speculate), you can see that there is no obvious gap. Asian means are higher and SD is similar (although there is a lot of variation by country).
I think it’s quite hard to do cross-cultural or cross-linguistic relative verbal IQ estimates. (How would you do it?) Math testing is much more reliable.
There are obvious forces suppressing E Asian achievement at the tails: social conformity, relative poverty, perhaps even a genetic component in personality differences leading to fewer mavericks. I don’t see that there’s a cognitive component, though.
I also find it funny that you don’t think Terence Tao (Fields medalist) might not be as smart as Euler. There is every reason to think he is. Have a look at Needham’s books on science in China – you might be surprised at the number of “geniuses” there (based on things they invented that only later appeared in the west) that you and Charles Murray have never heard of.
Finally, just imagine what a Roman or Greek thinker 2000 years ago would have thought about Germanic peoples: “a bunch of brutes with no geniuses or intellectual accomplishments, and we have the last thousand years of data to go on!” Of course they were badly wrong…
There are obvious forces suppressing E Asian achievement at the tails: social conformity, relative poverty, perhaps even a genetic component in personality differences leading to fewer mavericks. I don’t see that there’s a cognitive component, though.
steve, my impression though is that japan still is less productive in terms of innovation than a european nations of similar income and smaller size. what do you think? groups like chinese and japanese americans might be better tests. yes, they show up in spades in putnam, olympiads, etc., but what about top-flight researchers? could disparities in academic fields be due to different age profiles, or perhaps siphoning off into other disciplines due to parental pressure (more E($$) as a doctor than a physicist despite the small chance of everlasting fame in the latter case).
I also find it funny that you don’t think Terence Tao (Fields medalist) might not be as smart as Euler. There is every reason to think he is. Have a look at Needham’s books on science in China – you might be surprised at the number of “geniuses” there (based on things they invented that only later appeared in the west) that you and Charles Murray have never heard of.
i should have stated this in my first comment: let’s avoid the ‘dueling’ geniuses rhetorical trick. it’s going to generate a lot more smoke than fire, though people like to fixate on personalities.
Finally, just imagine what a Roman or Greek thinker 2000 years ago would have thought about Germanic peoples: “a bunch of brutes with no geniuses or intellectual accomplishments, and we have the last thousand years of data to go on!” Of course they were badly wrong…
the irony is that frederick the great in 18th century prussia said basically the same of the germans as well (comparing them to the french of course). in any case, we should be careful of these ‘national character’ generalizations, especially with out of the blue confounds such as toxoplasma gondii.
For over 2 thousand years Asians in general focused on literature rather than math and science. If you ever wanted to become something in life all you gotta do back (even just 150 years ago) was to memorize the confucious classics, write an exam and impress the Emperor by writing a few original poems.
People who don’t understand the history of Asian education would bring up the idea of a “higher asian aptitude in math” and suggest that Asians are not performing according to what the average IQ would suggest. However, one must realize that the sciences were not even incorporated into the educational system until about 70 years ago. Science was not valued, even though China for example was technologically the most advanced nation for a while, there was no real value put on science education, instead education was always focused on the Arts.
The phenomenon whereby Asians in general value science only really kicked in within the last 120 years in Japan, and last 70 years or so in China. Occurred mainly after having seen the value of technology first hand through what was brought by the West. Ever since, it’s been a catch up game.
Asians are actually doing pretty well for nobel prizes. When making comparisons, one should really only look at the past 50 years of nobel laureates for an even slightly fair comparison (anything past 50 years ago there weren’t many tech schools in Asia to begin with, everyone was still based on Arts with the government trying to force science to advance within the nation). Not only that, but the Nobel prize is very West oriented. 50 years ago Asians didn’t even know who Nobel was, nevermind that he had a prize named after him. The committee in Sweden didn’t focus on Asian scientists, nor did Asian people care about nominating.
Half the time I see people posting ideas such as “asians have higher IQ but they have lower variance” which is untrue, because the variance is actually higher as well, it’s almost as if the West is afraid of losing their dominance eventually once Asia catches up. Already Japan has developed an engine that runs on water (once thought to be an idea of science fiction, but yes, check out Genepax). The technique of changing skin cells into stem cells was developed by two teams, once in Japan and one in America (the main researchers in America were actually Chinese, the supervisor was Western, but his contributions are small compared to the main researcher).
Asians are a force to be reckoned with. It’s only beginning to show now, but they are pretty scary. I’m just really hoping the US and UK can figure out a way to keep China at bay. Japan is an ally, but China is iffy. Who knows what they’ll do once they’re #1 in tech and economics.
f, expect some more data crunching on nobel’s in the near future on this weblog. the question is: does east asia punch at its weight in proportion to its 25% or so of the world’s population? i would say not yet.
also, i take the latencies you imply seriously…but i would offer a counter-objection that many of the same things you say about asians could apply to ashkenazi jews. before the jewish enlightenment their ‘intellectual’ production in talmud studies was very similar in character to east asians, but once they got out of their ghettos they changed cultures very quickly. the difference of course is that ashkenazi jews were bathed in a sea of gentiles and the most intellectual productive of these jews were assimilationists who to a great extent left their jewishness behind. again, i think asian americans are the best control for this since their experience of being minorities among a majority is a good analog. i do wonder if the black-baling of ashkenazi jews from respectable professions like medicine and law siphoned more of them into fields like physics than otherwise might have been the case.
Asians are a force to be reckoned with. It’s only beginning to show now, but they are pretty scary. I’m just really hoping the US and UK can figure out a way to keep China at bay. Japan is an ally, but China is iffy. Who knows what they’ll do once they’re #1 in tech and economics.
keep their enormous population of old people alive? ;-)
Razib,
Japan is a complicated case. They are a rich country, but haven’t supported basic science at US levels, and have, as you said, lagged behind western countries of similar size and wealth in big breakthroughs. They have supported corporate engineering-style research, and in those areas there is no question they are competitive with other countries.
I wouldn’t discount social/cultural factors. E Asians tend to be more conformist and less confrontational — whether this has a genetic component I don’t know, but it might. If you go to a physics meeting in E Asia you will find the audience far less lively in terms of tough questions for the speaker. Privately, they may understand everything about the speaker’s work — including weak points — but don’t feel comfortable asking aggressive questions. Similarly, students are less likely to challenge their advisors, etc. These generalizations are well known and you can even find educational planners in Korea or Japan trying to revamp their system to be more “US style” in teaching and research. The fascinating GNXP question is whether some of this behavior has a genetic component.
One must also note that scientific advancement is greatly hindered by a lack of incentives in Asia. I don’t know how Korea and China works, but specifically in Japan it is still a problem. You only have to check out the bio of the man who invented the blue LED. He was basically driven out of his company, despite having developed something that accounts for a large part of their current income. He asked for a percentage of the earnings (something that is easy to get in teh US), but was instead given a bonus of $5000 for something that gave the company a source of income worth hundreds of millions per year. He sued and eventually got a few million and moved to the US altogether. When the execs of the company were interviewed they actually said something along the lines of “him leaving is no big loss, we prefer to have someone more normal working for us, he was selfish for wanting compensation for working for a company that gave him a job.”
To deny culture having a play is kind of foolish. In this case, corporate culture can make it harder to strive. Who wants to spend an extra 30 hours a week fora year to develp something new and be given only 5000 dollars? It’s ridiculous over ther sometimes as well.
Similarly, students are less likely to challenge their advisors, etc. These generalizations are well known and you can even find educational planners in Korea or Japan trying to revamp their system to be more “US style” in teaching and research. The fascinating GNXP question is whether some of this behavior has a genetic component.
steve, drd4 famously varies so that east asians have very little of the variant which contributes to ADHD. this might be the tip of the iceberg. i’ve seen data which suggests that people of asian origin who are raised in a non-asian environment (e.g., USA) have very different values re: individualism compared to asians raised among asians. but, i have mooted the possibility that you might have multiplier effects kicking in when you have a critical mass of people who are not going to rock the boat by disposition. IOW, a mix of personality morphs might be optimal toward particular modes of economic production. enough conformists to allow for order, but enough non-conformists to generate new ideas.
f, i’ve seen some ethnographic work of japanese ‘scientific’ culture. so yes, i know of what you speak of (in fact, i know many foreign born american academics from asia have difficulties with the lack of ‘respect’ that they are sometimes subject to). GNXP readers might be interested in reading motoo kimura’s experience, he left japan for the USA as a young researcher because of the stifling of new ideas by his seniors, but returned when he himself had attained enough stature to express ideas independently.
note: much appreciated if readers could think of other likely loci besides DRD4 which might vary….
“does east asia punch at its weight in proportion to its 25% or so of the world’s population?”
Probably not. Asia still has problems in that sector. But i have no doubt that things are changing, and the Asian nations are gathering a much larger share of acclaim than they used to. Year by year it seems like the number of asian recipients of big prizes are growing. I don’t doubt that it’s probably a function of the economic growth somehow as well. More wealth = better labs.
The one thing that might be interesting in crunching numbers is to compare the population of educated engineers/scientists and compare that to the number of laureats in that nation. Just comparing total population to amount of laureates would produce a skewed understanding. For example, India and China combined probably make up a large chunk of the world’s population. 20% or so. But how many people in India and China actually get an education? How many of them actually get an education at the post-graduate level that rivals European education? How many of them actually have higher education that would prepare them to be creative in ways that would actually make them contenders for the nobel prize? You can expect to compare a nation filled with geologists to produce more nobel laureates than a nation filled with a more diverse body of Physiscists and Chemists etc… Even though there is 1 billion people in China for example, by no means do they have as many people (by percentage of their population) having completed post secondary. It’s changing, but it’s still not quite there.
I guess Japan would be a more fair comparison (their educational level actually is pretty good up to the High School level), so a comparison is more valid between US and Japan for example.
Still, another issue i want to bring up about Japan, on top of having a corporate culture that hinders creativity, also has an educational system that hinders creativity and knowledge (surprising that knowledge is in there eh?). Japan is known to work their students to the bone up until High School graduation. But Japan is also known to have the most relaxed post-secondary educational system in the world. Even if you go to the most difficult school in Japan (University of Tokyo), students are known to sleep in class (that is if they show up at all). They drink, sleep and eat. That is all they do. Teachers are known to give out automatic As, there is no curve! No incentive to compete once they’ve accepted. Why? It is partially tied once again to the corporate structure. Corporations in Japan actually prefer blank slates (who are potentially smart, proven by acceptance into big name schools). They don’t actually want new employees to know anything. They want to train new recruits to fit exactly like a puzzle into their corporate structure, learning the system as it was taught to them, by way of spoon feeding. There is no encouragement of creative thinking. No sense of competition (i guess cooperation to an extreme is Japan’s style). A graduate level education is actually considered almost useless in Japan because of this idea of blank slate, it might actually make getting a job harder in Japan! Hard to believe eh? It’s the opposite here in N. America, a PhD gets you the better jobs.
The culture altogether is tough on creativity. (All of this is once again directed at JBS, i hope JBS learns something about how culture can affect creativity). It’s by no means definitive, but I do believe that it is a large factor.
Funny how obviously influental cultural elements never get cited for blacks and Hispanics, but culture sure does get a fair shake with Razib when it comes to East Asians.
For the record, I do think family culture and society have a huge role to play for Asian performance; I similarly think that culture, educational/health status of mothers, perceived social status/opportunities, and lifelong actual opportunities play a significant role in dragging down the minority average.
Funny how obviously influental cultural elements never get cited for blacks and Hispanics, but culture sure does get a fair shake with Razib when it comes to East Asians.
see my note: It seems to me that the most plausible explanation has to be that individual intelligence isn’t sufficient for intellectual creativity, though it is likely a necessary precondition.
of course there could be a lot of variables. if blacks and latino americans had around the same (or better) measured test scores and underperformed than i would talk about that more since discrimination is the most plausible explanation. as it is, east asians have the same measured test scores, and produce a fair number of people going into science & engineering pipelines, but at the far tail of scientific creativity they seem to under perform as measured in nobels. so it isn’t really that funny, it’s a natural response to different contexts and priors. obviously malnutrition, disease, etc. are good explanations for the low IQs of african populations, but this is less plausible for african americans who have the same height distributions as white americans, suggesting that they’re not underfed (though perhaps you could argue that they’re overfed noting the obesity problems in the community).
educational/health status of mothers, perceived social status/opportunities, and lifelong actual opportunities play a significant role in dragging down the minority average.
none of these would really apply for japanese in japan, and to a great extent asian americans (who are stereotyped as smart). so that begs the question about cultural re: intellectual creativity. japan might be atypical, or it might not. how about the taiwanese? or south koreans?
“can expect to compare a nation filled with geologists to produce more nobel laureates than a nation filled with a more diverse body of Physiscists and Chemists etc…”
It should be “can’t expect” just in case someone reads carefully and gets confused.
All of this is once again directed at JBS, i hope JBS learns something about how culture can affect creativity
JBS’ position might be more subtle and detailed than you would infer from the comment FWIW. that’s the main reason i suggest that people elaborate their logic so that there’s a minimal amount of rhetorical shadow-boxing.
finally, let me reiterate: let’s focus on china, taiwan, the koreas and japan. these are nations where populations do well on psychometric tests. additionally, taiwan, south korea and japan are first world or close. japan in particular two generations of prosperity under its belt.
also, i don’t want to stifle discussion, but i’d prefer that we keep the focus on east asian intellectual creativity. we’ve talked about the B-W IQ gap ten thousand times on this weblog and i don’t think much new will be said in any exchange on that topic. the issues here are fundamentally different because east asians in in east asia and east asians in other nations exhibit the same psychometric profiles.
Razib wrote: steve, drd4 famously varies so that east asians have very little of the variant which contributes to ADHD. this might be the tip of the iceberg. i’ve seen data which suggests that people of asian origin who are raised in a non-asian environment (e.g., USA) have very different values re: individualism compared to asians raised among asians. but, i have mooted the possibility that you might have multiplier effects kicking in when you have a critical mass of people who are not going to rock the boat by disposition.
This is very plausible to me.
As far as underperforming on the tail, I’d like to see some serious data on, say, under 40 researchers at top institutions. I suspect Asian-Americans do perform more or less in line with psychometric predictions, which suggests the cultural explanation is at least partly right. You might add that into your recent Nobels trend research project ;-)
I’d like to see some serious data on, say, under 40 researchers at top institutions.
steve fair enough…i’ll have more time in the future inshallah, but if an enterprising reader wants to do the analysis i’ll republish it here. perhaps the ideal would be to compare japanese americans to japanese japanese.
steve, drd4 famously varies so that east asians have very little of the variant which contributes to ADHD. this might be the tip of the iceberg.
This may not be what you had in mind, but…Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is co-morbid with ADD/ADHD at extremely high rates (around 35% of kids with ADD have ODD). Prevalence of ODD is between 2% and 16% of the population according to the DSM-IV. Higher rates of whatever alleles correlate with ODD might make a society less conformist.
Bi-polar disorder is also co-morbid with ADD/ADHD at around 25%. There is evidence that bi-polar disorder is associated with creativity.
From Wikipedia article Creativity and Mental Illness:
A 2005 study at the Stanford University School of Medicine showed for the first time that a sample of children who either have or are at high risk for bipolar disorder score higher on a creativity index. Children with bipolar parents who were not bipolar themselves also scored higher.
Genes associated specifically with bi-polar disorder are GRK# and DGKH.
If whites tend to be more bi-polar and less conformist, that might be a start toward explaining greater innovation and creativity despite lower IQs.
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Loved-China-Fantastic/dp/0060884592
If Joseph Needham (1900-1995)were Judge of achievement, you would have got different feeling about past from Charles Murray. It takes one to know one. Superiority based on ignorance can go both way.
But that is not the point of what really going on.
During Spring-fall and warring states time (time of Confucius), Chinese experienced most creativity because of competing kindoms for 800 years. Novel ideas were encouraged.
Greeks were also most creative during city-states time due to the similar competitiion.
In moden time, each european country is about same size of Chinese kindoms 2000 years ago with intense competition.
Again I will not discount genetic factor either.
If whites tend to be more bi-polar and less conformist, that might be a start toward explaining greater innovation and creativity despite lower IQs.
thanks marc. here’s what i think we’ll know within the next decade: the frequencies of supercreative intellectuals in regards to particular minor frequency alleles. imagine if you see enormous differences between the intellectual production of very IQ han chinese individuals with and without the 7R variant of drd4. or perhaps in china 7R people tend to be isolated social pariahs to a far greater extent than in the west. so you have a gene-culture interaction effect….
also, re: steve’s question about whether we’re talking about something that isn’t even an issue (east asian underrepresentation at the tail of creativity),
1) any ideas the best way to test this? the N’s for field’s medals are too small, and i don’t even like the N’s for nobel. how about something like howard hughes’ grants?
2) anything like this needs to distinguish foreign vs. american born researchers of east asian ethnicity. that means we need to look over bio info. this might work as a collaborative project. anyone willing to spare some time for this?
As recently as 10 years ago almost all Asian undergrads at US universities (say, >90%) had either been born here or spent a major part of their childhoods here — very few had their high school educations abroad.
So, in the 30-50 age group a US undergraduate degree is a good indicator that the person was socialized mostly here rather than abroad.
Anecdotally, drawing from social networks at places like Caltech, Ivies, MIT, etc., it seems that Asian Americans (scientists, engineers and business people) in my age group are about as successful as their non-Asian counterparts who passed through the same universities (perhaps even more so). This sample includes startup founders, hedgies, quants, research scientists, etc. So I don’t see any creativity gap…
steve,
yeah, i’m focusing on the last group, research scientists.* i think of scientific culture & creativity as relatively sui generis in human history. in contrast, industry, technology and mercantile bent seem to be rather common. obviously japan is an example of a technologically advanced and economically successful east asian society. taiwan and south korea are almost up there. china shows evidence of going in that direction unless its peculiar demographic profile causes a major social disturbance (i.e., aging but still relatively poor).
* to some extent i do think that it is an arguable point that anyone who is smart enough to be a tenure track professor is probably irrationally diminishing their earning power while at the same time almost certainly not make a memorable contribution to science (that is, earn gilgameshian everlasting fame). that being said, i also believe that this set have generated enormous spillover benefits to society at large that has allowed our civilization to break free of the malthusian trap. the ancients had medical and legal specialists, but they didn’t really have scientists (i think the philosophers and tinkerers were in that direction, but i don’t think they are quite the same qualitatively).
Razib wrote:
* to some extent i do think that it is an arguable point that anyone who is smart enough to be a tenure track professor is probably irrationally diminishing their earning power. that being said, i also believe that this set have generated enormous spillover benefits to society at large that allowed our civilizations to break free of the malthusian trap.
No argument from me :-) It may be irrational from a homo economicus perspective, but most researchers put more value on intellectual stimulation and satisfaction in their work than on money.
Let me share the following story. I have a Japanese friend who was a biology postdoc at Yale when we met and is now a professor at Kyoto University, which is one of the top universities in Japan. At dinner, soon after arriving in New Haven, he casually commented to me that the US was different from Japan because many of the professors at places like Yale were real geniuses. As a student in Japan he had no idea that real professors (as opposed to historical figures) might actually be geniuses. The professors he knew in Japan were smart, but seemed very boring and undynamic. They didn’t inspire the imaginations of the students at all.
I was quite surprised by his comments and I questioned him quite closely. He wasn’t talking about ethnicities or genes. The genius professors he was talking about in the states included Asians — in fact, as I recall, his lab PI was a foreign-born Chinese guy. This was really a sociological remark comparing the different systems, personas, etc.
A scientific infrastructure is a complicated machine. Motivated, highly intelligent individuals are perhaps the most important input, but the output depends a lot on how the system is organized, its values, culture, etc.
A scientific infrastructure is a complicated machine.
i think it is important to note a background assumption for me here: i don’t believe that a scientific culture as we know it today really existed earlier than 1600 in europe (started in northern italy, eventually spread to france, england and germany, etc.). and it didn’t really attain its modern shape until the 19th century even in europe.
I’ll provide references later, but Eysenck, in his book on genius, cited a study among Oxford or Cambridge undergrads showing that the personality trait Psychoticism positively correlated with scores on a creativity test. Rushton, in a contribution to Nyborg’s festschrift for Eysenck, provided info on a study of his showing the same thing among Canadian research psychologists (though the measure of creativity was peer ratings, maybe publication count too).
Basically, this is the less extreme form of sociopathy — not being very socialized.
Will dig around for data on prevalence of sociopathy in Europe vs. NE Asia, but it’s probably going to show what we already believe: that Euros have higher sociopathy than Asians. These people were probably weeded out of the genepool in East Asia due to whatever forces also prevented the 7R allele of DRD4 from spreading there.
(Well, just to state it clearly: the above research shows that the personality trait contributes to variance in creativity *even among smarties*.)
“* to some extent i do think that it is an arguable point that anyone who is smart enough to be a tenure track professor is probably irrationally diminishing their earning power. “
possibly, but there’s also a potential explanation for this behavior. males are geared to strive for status, and money is but one kind of status. what professors lose in financial gain, they might make back in respect or deference for their demonstrated intellect. if they are extremely talented, they also have a chance of having their name forever associated with whatever discoveries they make.
f says:
For over 2 thousand years Asians in general focused on literature rather than math and science. If you ever wanted to become something in life all you gotta do back (even just 150 years ago) was to memorize the confucious classics, write an exam and impress the Emperor by writing a few original poems.
Yes, this has bothered me as well. The whole culture is very literate … and I know plenty of Chinese people, both those who were educated in China and those who were educated in Western countries, and they are no verbal slouches, so I do not understand the claims that they lag in verbal skills compared to math skills.
if they are extremely talented, they also have a chance of having their name forever associated with whatever discoveries they make.
right, but what’s the chance of this? IOW, you have a very smart kid at around the age of 22. what’s the best choice, med school or grad school if you can choose? if you get into med school you have pretty much a guarantee of an upper middle class lifestyle and a reasonable amount of prestige. of course, the chance of everlasting fame of being a physicist is probably higher than if you are an anesthesiologist, but, how many physics phds will earn everlasting fame? i guess the ‘rationality’ is contingent on how strongly you weight the utility of everlasting fame, if it’s close to infinite, if you hold that that that’s the only chance at immorality and you don’t prioritize a normal middle class life then it is a chance you might want to take. interesting question. i guess it’s about values.
but anyhow, its relevance to this question is that there’s a lot of pressure in asian cultures toward practical professions from what i know. especially medicine and engineering. parents don’t give a shit about you following your bliss.
so I do not understand the claims that they lag in verbal skills compared to math skills.
i think the claim is that the east asian advantage in IQ on europeans can be accounted for purely by the visuo-spatial component. there’s parity verbally. it isn’t as if classically educated western elites didn’t emphasize literary values; there’s a reason england got way behind germany when it came to sci & engineering in the 19th cent.*
* though it isn’t as long standing as that in china. scholarly accomplishments became big after the rise of firearms and nobilities became more diversified in their status signally portfolios. classical elites were also keen on literary educations as a way to mark their high social origins; you could identify some of elite origin by the way they spoke latin or greek.
Steve says:
Have a look at Needham’s books on science in China – you might be surprised at the number of “geniuses” there (based on things they invented that only later appeared in the west) that you and Charles Murray have never heard of.
I think that Needham was too willing to ascribe all inventions ever made as being Chinese inventions. For example, gunpowder and cannon. In a book I am currently reading, Needham is referenced as saying that gunpowder was invented in the 8th century in China and that cannon were in use in the 1200s.
The problem I have with this is that explosives are such a useful invention in warfare (independent of cannon, as we know from western warfare) but more importantly in large scale civil engineering projects (and the Chinese undertook enormous engineering projects both before and after the 8th century) that one has to be suspicious of claims that the Chinese invented the formula for gunpowder.
Of course, it is clear that they were aware of the properties of saltpeter as early as the 8th to 9th centuries (and they transmitted knowledge of Chinese snow to the Arabs etc) and that they were experimenting with incendiaries during the 1100s and 1200s, and that they knew how to cast large brass objects and that they knew about steel.
What is not clear to me is that they did invent gunpowder or cannon and whether Needham exercised enough caution in making his claims or that he understood that many works were attributed to earlier authors to lend them more authority.
razib says:
i think the claim is that the east asian advantage in IQ on europeans can be accounted for purely by the visuo-spatial component.
Hmmm, the way I see it stated, especially by those trying to find some way for Caucasians to be superior to the Chinese, is that Chinese math skills are ahead (and that it’s cultural or because the Chinese beat their kids*) … but that Caucasians are better at verbal skills.
(My children are half Chinese and I grew up outside the US, so I understand the need for discipline :-)
I am no expert, but would not be surprised if Needham were actually too generous to the Chinese given his sympathies.
However, I am sure that a fair account of technological or scientific advances (west vs east) is impossible without a huge scholarly effort. Murray is honest enough to state this occasionally when discussing his book. The point is typically overlooked by the JBS’s of the world.
Anyone looking for a PhD dissertation topic in history of science would find fertile ground here, I am sure.
Anyone looking for a PhD dissertation topic in history of science would find fertile ground here, I am sure.
speaking of ‘irrational’ but satisfying career choices :-)
Having recently heard someone praise Hong Kong Chinese as postdocs, and disparage PRC Chinese, I’d have to think that he thought that culture mattered.
And I do think that people tend to ignore how ephemeral relative position can be – the USA’s leading role is so very recent – post WWII, for heaven’s sake.
“What is not clear to me is that they did invent gunpowder or cannon and whether Needham exercised enough caution in making his claims or that he understood that many works were attributed to earlier authors to lend them more authority.”
No one really knows who invented the canon. You’re right, Needham didn’t exercise much caution. On page 311 of his book called Science and civilization he actually mentioned the Vietnamese as a possible inventer of the canon, and that there was evidence that the canon was actually brought into China during a conquest of Annam (name of Vietnam during that time) during the Ming Dynasty. He simply explained it away by saying that the metal-smiths in Vietnam “could have” been Chinese metal smiths without giving any further evidence. Saying that the chinese “could have” introduced the cannon in Vietnam earlier, and then it “could have” been reintroduced into China years later when China invaded Vietnam. It was a weak rebuttal, and those few paragraphs alone were not convincing enough to make me believe China invented it. There seems to be a good chance that Vietnam actually invented it. Unless i read it wrong, but check it out yourself.
Oh, full title of book i was mentioning is “Science and Civilization in China.” I assume that’s the book people are referring to when mentioning Needham at times as well.
Yes, this has bothered me as well. The whole culture is very literate … and I know plenty of Chinese people, both those who were educated in China and those who were educated in Western countries, and they are no verbal slouches, so I do not understand the claims that they lag in verbal skills compared to math skills.
There are probably a variety of reasons. Maybe cultural stereotype? Most Chinese are immigrants and don’t know English at the same level as Caucasian peers. The problem with this is, testing you on a language you are not %100 fluent in isn’t definitive of your skills in language. It’s like trying to determine the IQ of America by giving them a Chinese language test. I think the verbal lag of Chinese people is greatly exaggerated, although probably not unfounded. There might be a slight defeciency, but I doubt it is as big as some people try to make it out to be. I actually know many Asian lawyers, they compete just fine with their Caucasian peers. Law is a field i assume requires language skills. Just look at the incoming class of Harvard, Yale, Stanford for LAW (yeah, most people think Asians only represent 20% for non-Artsy stuff, but check up for Law, i think you’d be surprised). So either Asians are at least average on the verbal sector, or they work hard enough to overcome it. Either way.
So either Asians are at least average on the verbal sector, or they work hard enough to overcome it.
yes. at least average. but look at the difference between medical and law schools. last i checked in the former ‘asian americans’ had slightly higher academic stats for the former but slightly lower for the latter vis-a-vis whites. within law school applications a sizable number of applications are of course jewish, who are verbally superior (i hope a reader won’t rebuke me for stereotypes and creating a hostile environment!).
http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2005/mcatgparaceeth.htm
mcat, asian vs. white (all native born, usa), accepted
verbal 9.7 vs. 10.1
physical sci 10.8 vs. 10.2
bio sci 10.8 vs. 10.6
couldn’t find the LSAT numbers quickly. much appreciated if someone posts ‘em.
Re: MCAT and LSAT stats,
Among those Asian applicants are many non-native speakers, or people raised in families where English is not the first language. So I don’t know what it tells us about verbal IQ.
Frankly, I don’t see any easy way to get at verbal IQ unless you look at adopted Asians raised in families of native speakers. (Or n-th generation immigrants, where n is at least 2-3. My parents’ mastery of English was imperfect, despite my dad being an engineering prof. I’m sure this disadvantaged me in SAT vocabulary relative to my Jewish friends :-)
Lynn’s IQ data, taken at face value, suggests an average IQ difference between NE Asians living in the US and NE Asia — with higher scores in NE Asia.
Just something to factor into the discussion.
Here you go:
The intelligence of Korean children adopted in Belgium
Marcel Frydman and Richard Lynn
Several studies have found that Oriental populations tend to have high mean IQs, strong visuo-spatial abilities but relatively weaker verbal abilities, as compared with Caucasian populations in the United States and Europe. The present paper reports data on these claims for 19 Korean infants adopted by families in Belgium. The children were tested with the WISC at a mean age of 10 yr. Their mean IQ was 118.7, the verbal IQ was 110.6 and the performance IQ 123.5. The results are interpreted as confirming those obtained from other Oriental populations.
This was actually discussed previously on GNXP:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/07/numerical-processing-in-whites-and_17.php
Is there a Flynn correction that needs to be applied to these (rather high) numbers? The GNXP post has a remark to this effect and says it corrects the overall IQ to Belgian AVG+10 (110 or so?). So I would guess the adopted Koreans are about average in verbal and strongly superior in math relative to ethnic Belgians. I don’t have access to the full paper at home.
“i guess the ‘rationality’ is contingent on how strongly you weight the utility of everlasting fame, if it’s close to infinite, if you hold that that that’s the only chance at immorality and you don’t prioritize a normal middle class life then it is a chance you might want to take. interesting question. i guess it’s about values.”
Uhm, do most people get into physics because they’re after evelasting fame or because physics captures their imagination?
Edited By Siteowner
Several studies have found that Oriental populations tend to have high mean IQs, strong visuo-spatial abilities but relatively weaker verbal abilities, as compared with Caucasian populations in the United States and Europe. The present paper reports data on these claims for 19 Korean infants adopted by families in Belgium. The children were tested with the WISC at a mean age of 10 yr. Their mean IQ was 118.7, the verbal IQ was 110.6 and the performance IQ 123.5. The results are interpreted as confirming those obtained from other Oriental populations.
There seems to be a few studies on adopted Asian children. There seems to have been one by Clark & Hanisee in 1982 (i think, if my memory serves me right) on adopted Vietnamese and Korean children (into White Belgian and American families). Once again, both the adopted Vietnamese and Korean children outperformed their national averages by at least 10 points when it comes to IQ. It seems like the Lynn study didn’t include Vietnamese children.
On a side note, did anyone notice Lynn’s bias against the Vietnamese? He doesn’t seem to base his numbers on the Vietnamese on anything substantial, and he explains away higher than expected Vietnamese IQ by saying they must have somehow randomly tested chinese people instead of Vietnamese. He even refused to take numbers that were gathered recently (both hovering above 99) and instead made an estimate of 95 or something in his latest edition, basing it on an average of Thailand and China (once again, instead of using data). The main seems biased against the Vietnamese at times (i’ve noticed since the Vietnamese IQ thing is often brought up as an attack on Lynn’s weak scientific method). I found his specific claim that the adopted Vietnamese children being chinese is kind of ridiculous. Mainly because it comes without any proof, and is based mainly on speculation (bad for a scientist in my opinion, speculating without proof), especially considering the fact that during the Vietnam War the Chinese ethnic group were notorious for refusing to fight in the war (low death rate). Most orphans were a result of families that actually were involved in the war (Vietnamese familities). I highly doubt anyone would somehow choose a majority orphaned Chinese kids for a study when the majority of the orphaned in Vietnam were Vietnamese children. Lynn is kind of ridiculous at times.
I highly doubt anyone would somehow choose a majority orphaned Chinese kids for a study when the majority of the orphaned in Vietnam were Vietnamese children. Lynn is kind of ridiculous at times.
badly worded, let me give it another try. What i meant was that, it is ridiculous to believe that it is likely that a study can contain mainly Chinese orphans when the children were picked up at a Vietnamese orphanage, in country with mainly Vietnamese orphans, due to a war whereby the Chinese ethnic group within the nation refused to fight, hence not producing many orphans. It is possible that maybe one or two of the randomly chosen children were chinese, but as a whole, fit is not enough to skew the numbers to the extend that someone would throw them away altogether or try to explain it away in the manner that Lynn did. It is much more likely that the majority of the chosen children were Vietnamese.
Someone probably already mentioned this stuff before, but it kind of annoys me how Lynn did that. His book had so much potential, would have been a much more solid book if he didn’t have all those small flaws in them.
f, he has some weird issues not acknowledging that some data shows that south chinese seem to be equidistant* in genetic relation between north chinese, koreans and japanese and southeast asians. mostly cuz i think south chinese perform equally as well as north chinese, koreans and japanes.
* cavalli-sforza actually put them with the southeast asian clade, but i think follow ups have given mixed results. this is in line of the historical data on migration patterns, linguistics and customs, which suggest amalgamation south of tye yangtze.
f, i recall reading 1/3 of vietnamese immigrants to the USA were ethnic chinese. your logic seems fine though, just pointing out that perhaps he assumed that because so many of the boat people were chinese that the orphans must be….
I actually read up on it because it bothered me a lot, his logic. Being a boat person is not always a direct result of being involved with the Democratic regime of the south. You could leave for other reasons as well. The boat people however are relatives of those in combat (the 2/3 who are Vietnamese). The 1/3 who are ethnic Chinese often were not in any form of combat, but were businessmen who were actually exiled for simply being Chinese. Even though they were not directly in any combat, it seems like the Vietnamese communist government were afraid of Chinese spies and distrusted the Chinese ethnic group due to the Chinese attack on Vietnam in 1979. The percentage of ethnic Chinese of ethnic Chinese in the boat people class actually does not reflect the percentage of ethnic Chinese orphans, they are not actually related. It makes more sense to believe that there are way more ethnic Vietnamese orphans. The disproportionate amount of ethnic Chinese in the boat people class also makes sense due to the general hatred towards the Chinese during the time, forcing them to leave. Forcing someone to leave your land doesn’t produce as many orphans as fighting in combat though.
Anyways, enough of my rant. If someone could crunch some numbers that would be amazing. In my mind, even if the numbers do not explain the lack of Asian creativity, it might point towards FUTURE asian creativity or maybe FUTURE lack of creativity. Science is fun because you can make predictions based on data when it defies previous expectations.
Examples of asian creativity in Chemistry include Prozac, MSG, methamphetamine,Red Bull, and many more.
study among Oxford or Cambridge undergrads showing that the personality trait Psychoticism positively correlated with scores on a creativity test.
Schizotypal personality correlates with creativity, and likely genetically influenced to some extent.
Re the MCAT scores:
Why only give the accepted scores? The link also includes scores for applicants. Neither categories are representative of their respective populations and don?t tell much unless you know the actual proportions they constitute of their respective populations. As they are the data say much more about the magnitude of affirmative action advantages and penalties given in the US.
Re LSAT scores, I found this report from The LSAC. http://www.lsacnet.org/research/LSAT-Performance-with-Regional-Gender-and-Racial-Ethnic-Breakdowns-1997?1998-Through-2003?2004-Testing-Years.pdf
Also, Asian American does not necessarily mean East Asian, so it is not completely relevant to the discussion of East Asian Ability. Anyway, here?s the data for 2003-04: (mean, S.D., percent of test takers) for all, then repeated for females and males.
Asian American: All(152.02, 9.84, 8.4%), F(151.69, 9.56, 4.5%), M(152.41, 10.15, 3.9%)
Caucasian: All(152.47, 8.71, 65.0%), F(151.91, 8.57, 30.4%), M(152.96, 8.80, 34.7%)
African American: All(142.43, 8.48, 10.4%); F(142.25, 8.30, 6.8%), M(142.78, 8.82, 3.6%)
So, in all groups of LSAT takers males have a slightly higher mean and variance than females. Asians have slightly lower means than whites, but higher variance, as with the PISA math results for international comparisons. As I recall, currently whites are about 60% of SAT takers and Asian Americans are around 10%, so it appears that white college graduates pursue law at a higher rate than Asian American graduates. However, a higher percentage of Asians than whites in the general population take the SAT and go on to college.
Finally, I have a question about how representative the Chinese populations of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the USA are of the potential of Chinese from the PRC? I know that earlier Chinese immigrants tended to come as unskilled laborers and are in that respect similar to many European groups that came to the US in their social strata in their home countries. However, many of the more recent Chinese immigrants have in effect been screened by coming over as students or workers in technical fields and are probably well above average. I remember reading in Weyl?s (now outdated) ?Geography of American Achievement? that new Chinese immigrants were much more accomplished than the descendants of Chinese that immigrated in the 19th C. I would assume that the Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan are not representative of China as a whole either because of historical migration patterns?
I remember reading in Weyl?s (now outdated) ?Geography of American Achievement? that new Chinese immigrants were much more accomplished than the descendants of Chinese that immigrated in the 19th C. I would assume that the Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan are not representative of China as a whole either because of historical migration patterns?
the new immigrants are more educated, especially the taiwanese. but that’s a pretty a irrelevant point re: the ‘model minority’ stereotype, that emerged in the 1960s in the USA predicated on the relative success of the children of the first wave japanese and chinese immigrants, who were not of elite origin (japanese migration patterns were biased toward the lower peasantry who the gov. was trying to get rid of because of malthusian pressures). the oldest american chinese communites are cantonese, the newer ones are disproportionately fujianese, but much more diversified in general. the taiwanese chinese are mostly descendants of fujianese who were settled after the 16th century, a minority (around 10% or so) are hakka and other assorted mainland types (the latter of whom showed up after 1945 obviously). most overseas chinese communities are fujianese origin with a hakka minority (i believe all the southeast asian communities exhibit this pattern, and these form the preponderance of the overseas chinese).
IOW, the overseas chinese aren’t representative of china because they’re mostly drawn from a few regions of southeast china, especially fujian. but i would be willing to bet that they’re psychometrically not atypical for the chinese (though i hear stereotypes about south chinese being smart on these boards now and then). hong kong is a special case of self-selection for industrious and clever types obviously, but taiwan was settled by farmers, which i think is a good control for chinese peasants in a modern affluent society.
btw, appreciate the quality of comments so far. see you in the morning.
Asian American: All(152.02, 9.84, 8.4%), F(151.69, 9.56, 4.5%), M(152.41, 10.15, 3.9%)
Caucasian: All(152.47, 8.71, 65.0%), F(151.91, 8.57, 30.4%), M(152.96, 8.80, 34.7%)
African American: All(142.43, 8.48, 10.4%); F(142.25, 8.30, 6.8%), M(142.78, 8.82, 3.6%)
Where do people get the idea that the variance for Asians is lower? What data give them that idea? I saw data for the GRE too and it seems to paint the same picture (decent mean + high variance). I continuously read this idea of a narrow variance throughout the net, and yet everytime i see data Asians in general always have higher variance (though sometimes lower means i guess).
“Where do people get the idea that the variance for Asians is lower?”
I think it’s just that 1) intelligent, educated whites (i.e., the only whites likely to give the matter any thought) don’t want to believe that East Asians simply have higher g than they do (it’s ok our riff raff is dumber than your riff raff as long as we have more smart people, which is what really matters ;-) and 2) whites can’t believe that such a large population with such a large number of high g peoples would be less technologically prolific (granted this view is based on a narrow time horizon (last 5 centuries) and perhaps a somewhat limited knowledge of East Asian achievements in the West).
Also, as linked to above, LaGriff du Lion points out how diverse the East Asian population in the US is and that the distribution of Math SAT scores is broad than whites and appears to be bimodal. He posits that NE and S. Asians are high scorers and other Asians poor scorers. Given that NE Asians are about half of the US Asian population (per LaGriff – I haven’t verified this) and the total Asian variance seems to be slightly larger on most academic aptitude tests in the US, it is still possible that NE Asians have a narrower variance than whites (and a significantly higher mean). However, the PISA data presented above tend to contradict this.
“less technologically prolific”
– might be interesting to specify just how much less.
PhillyGuy,
That’s a great summary of the topic.
One confusion I see all the time on the internet is people somehow misread one of LaGriffe’s “smart fraction” posts in which he considers, but then disgards the possibility of a narrow NE Asian distribution.
Since I mentioned the “smart fraction” idea, which is that verbal IQ matters more than math IQ to GDP per capita, I have the following comments:
1) LaGriffe fits to current economic data, not realizing that with 10% GDP growth rates in China the relative GDP situation will be very different in the future, and that it has been very different in the past, when Asia was much wealthier than Europe. So his smart fraction conclusion is highly time dependent. It’s quite an elementary error of logic.
2) An even more fundamental problem with his analysis, as discussed on this thread, is that there is no evidence that Asian verbal ability is lower relative to whites. It’s easy to come to that (incorrect) conclusion by looking at, e.g., verbal scores of immigrants in what is not their primary language. To get a real handle on the situation would require data as from the Belgian-Korean adoption study I mentioned above, in which the Asians have been raised in the same language as they are tested. That study (modulo Flynn correction, or whatever) seems to say that relative verbal averages are comparable and the Asian advantage is on the math or visuospatial side.
Does anyone know who LaGriffe is? It would be great if he allowed comments on his site so these issues could be discussed more directly.
@Razib
I read Ng Aik Kwang’s book “Why are Asians less creative than Westerners”, but it was a bit disappointed. I just hinted to the fact that Asians lived in more conformistic societies — duh..
It was all nurture (culture), no nature at all. Are there any better books around, which focus on this topic? More focused to the interaction between nurture and nature, because it seems like an obvious riddle for mankind.
Imagine what progress and miracles the 1,5 billion East Asians could accomplish, if their creative potential was unlocked.
but I was a bit disappointed. It just
Pardon me for the error.
It was all nurture (culture), no nature at all. Are there any better books around, which focus on this topic? More focused to the interaction between nurture and nature, because it seems like an obvious riddle for mankind.
wait until genomics becomes more ubiquitous. i think that’s all you can hope to do right now.
There was a paper in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology in 2007 entitled ‘The geographic distribution of the big five personality traits’ (issue 38, 173-212) by D P Schmitt and others. This paper has North East Asians scoring markedly lower than Europeans on the openness to experience trait.
I believe there are three theories often posited for Asian underachievement, relative to their IQ-projected achievement:
1.) Lower IQ variance
2.) Lower verbal IQs
3.) Creativity deficit
Having ruled out the first 2 options, it seems like more research needs to be done on the third. Unfortunately I’m not sure what type of metrics could be indicators of creativity or how tests could quantifiably measure it.
“if the culture emphasizes conformity to the point of squelching creativity wouldn’t that suppress creativity?”
Do Asian societies really squelch creativity? From my anecdotal impressions, Asians are capable of supporting immense creativity. Video gaming, Pokemon, the Wii, DVD technology, miniature cars, etc…….. Nintendo, Sony, Matsushita, Toyota, and quite a large number of other Asian conglomerates are very creative by international standards. I don’t think Asian culture is as conformist as it might appear to our Western eyes.
On another note, I had a lot of Asian friends back in HS and I never got the impression that their home environments were not conducive to creativity. It seemed like the East Asian kids *I* knew were given a fair amount of latitude to do what they wanted, provided they kept up their school grades. From personal experience, I’d say South Asians impose quite a bit more conformity within the family than East Asians. Could be wrong though…..
when Asia was much wealthier than Europe
“Asia” also includes India, which was an economic and military superpower until the era of British colonialization. Chinese testing at a 100 IQ seems plausible to me (though inter-regional differences could be more significant than we realize), but India testing at 81 is quite the shocker indeed. It seems unlikely that two population groups could produce civilizations that are arguably somewhat comparable, but then test so far apart on IQ tests.
On a small tangent, I’ve noticed a great hesistancy amongst “race realism” proponents to discuss immense South Asian civilizational accomplishments or success amongst the diaspora. South Asian success always seems to be explained away with some stupid remark, i.e. “Only Aryan-looking Brahmins have IQs.” Anything that runs contary to this hypothesis gets shafted. Indian ingenuity from the Indus Valley era through the Mughal era is too incovenient to discsuss. Diaspora success in the UK (factory workers), Singapore (untouchables and laborers), and elsewhere is equally neglected.
Do Asian societies really squelch creativity? From my anecdotal impressions, Asians are capable of supporting immense creativity. Video gaming, Pokemon, the Wii, DVD technology, miniature cars, etc…….. Nintendo, Sony, Matsushita, Toyota, and quite a large number of other Asian conglomerates are very creative by international standards. I don’t think Asian culture is as conformist as it might appear to our Western eyes.
“creativity” is too broad a term i think. i should have been more specific. again, let me go back to the sui generis nature of western science, technology and economic growth starting around 1800, with origins back to the renaissance. literary, philosphical, religious and technological creativity are not unknown in most civilizations. the progressive (“whiggish”) nature of scientific creativity in the west, and its interlocking and syngeristic relationship to technological production and economic growth, are peculiar (the connection and symbiosis between natural philosophy and engineering which we take for granted didn’t really exist in a systematic manner in the pre-modern world).
“Asia” also includes India, which was an economic and military superpower until the era of British colonialization.
i do want to emphasize that to my knowledge the mainstream (majority) view is that average incomes in in northwest europe were higher than other regions of the world starting around 1500. the difference wasn’t multiplicative, as it became in the 1800s, but it seems that by the late medieval period northwest europe had caught up with south and east asia, likely surpassed them. this is *average*, not aggregate wealth, so obviously china and india were far wealthier than any european nation for a long time. there is a notable and not marginalized minority view that china was as wealth until the 1700s i think.
On a small tangent, I’ve noticed a great hesistancy amongst “race realism” proponents to discuss immense South Asian civilizational accomplishments or success amongst the diaspora.
i’d really appreciate that this thread stay on topic. not that that isn’t an interesting topic, but that’s a different one.
3.) Creativity deficit
This could take many forms ranging from a heritable personality factor, to entirely social/cultural factors, to a complex interaction between the two. Our best hope of finding out is if the heritable component is large and you find certain alleles of the sort described in this thread are disproportionately common among acknowledged “geniuses”. If it’s a complex gene-environment (society) interaction it will remain mysterious for some time.
Chinese testing at a 100 IQ seems plausible to me (though inter-regional differences could be more significant than we realize)
I doubt there are significant inter-regional differences. The Taiwanese and HK populations are not, on the whole, selected. As Razib pointed out, most Taiwanese are descended from Fujianese peasants. No mainlander thinks of Taiwanese as particularly smart, just lucky to have had a head start with modern capitalism. Fujian is not a province known for its success in the old imperial exams.
Within China it is well known that certain regions (e.g., Zhejiang) produce many successful exam candidates. The Chinese that have been studied most thoroughly by modern psychometrics don’t come from those regions, so there is every likelihood that, once standards of living rise, the average in PRC will be similar to (say) Taiwan. AVG=100 is plausible *now* for the entirety of PRC, but for the 200-300M urbanites the profile is probably already similar to Taiwan/HK/Korea.
Our best hope of finding out is if the heritable component is large and you find certain alleles of the sort described in this thread are disproportionately common among acknowledged “geniuses”. If it’s a *complex* gene-environment (society) interaction it will remain mysterious for some time.
my fingers are crossed that personality QTLs are going to be much larger effect than than IQ QTLs. and we need to be aware that these sorts of things could come out of nowhere; think about the impact of pathogens like t. gondii.
Here are two views on the Asian creativity question, one from a Japanese-born researcher at LSE and the other from an American. Guess who claims what?
Note Kanazawa is a big evo psych guy, yet mainly points to non-genetic causes.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04120128.pdf
No, It Ain?t Gonna Be Like That
Satoshi Kanazawa, Interdisciplinary Institute of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science
Abstract: For cultural, social, and institutional reasons, Asians cannot make original contributions to basic science. I therefore doubt Miller’s prediction for the Asian future of evolutionary psychology. I believe that its future will continue to be in the United States and Europe.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04129137.pdf
Asian Creativity: A Response to Satoshi Kanazawa
Geoffrey Miller, Department of Psychology, Logan Hall, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM
Abstract: This article responds to Satoshi Kanazawa?s thoughtful and entertaining comments about my article concerning the Asian future of evolutionary psychology. Contra Kanazawa?s argument that Asian cultural traditions and/or character inhibit Asian scientific creativity, I review historical evidence of high Asian creativity, and psychometric evidence of high Asian intelligence (a cognitive trait) and openness to experience (a personality trait) ? two key components of creativity. Contra Kanazawa?s concern that political correctness is a bigger threat to American evolutionary psychology than religious fundamentalism, I review evidence from research funding patterns and student attitudes suggesting that fundamentalism is more harmful and pervasive. Finally, in response to Kanazawa?s focus on tall buildings as indexes of national wealth and creativity, I find that 13 of the world?s tallest 25 buildings are in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan ? of which 11 were built in the last decade. Asian creativity, secularism, and architectural prominence point to a bright future for Asian science.
Our best hope of finding out is if the heritable component is large and you find certain alleles of the sort described in this thread are disproportionately common among acknowledged “geniuses”.
The reputations of a lot of “acknowledged geniuses” don’t stand the test of time. I suspect this is particularly true in the arts, which is what I care about. (Incidentally, I’ve often wondered why East Asians, with their high spatial abilities, never produced a Michelangelo or a Bernini.)
On the other hand, there are plenty of dead geniuses lying around in marked graves whose reputations have stood the test of time. We ought to dig them up and look at their DNA.
never produced a Michelangelo or a Bernini.
a lot of the artistic styles of renaissance and early modern europe were well known in the late ming and early ching courts; some chinese artists played with the techniques as a novelty. the kangxi emperor’s predecessor was a major enthusiast from what i recall. OTOH, they never got that interested in stuff like perspective to the point where it became normative as opposed to an exotic excursion into western forms. just taste i guess.
Maybe creativity isn’t the right word, but… what do Chinese or Japanese intellectuals think about ideas like AI, the Singularity, transhumanism etc? Japan is certainly robot-crazy, but is there an Asian equivalent of Vinge or Kurzweil or even an Eliezer Yudkowsky?
“Show respect to the spirits and deities, then keep away from them.”
- confucious
the generalization is that the central stem of chinese intellectual culture has had an aversion to metaphysical Big Think. daoism and buddhism have both generally been an opiate of the masses in a very literal way in china; buddhism in particular notably received extensive elite patronage from foreign dynasties which could not avail themselves of indigenous sources of legitimacy.
a lot of the artistic styles of renaissance and early modern europe were well known in the late ming and early ching courts; some chinese artists played with the techniques as a novelty. the kangxi emperor’s predecessor was a major enthusiast from what i recall. OTOH, they never got that interested in stuff like perspective to the point where it became normative as opposed to an exotic excursion into western forms. just taste i guess.
Razib, could you say a little nore about this? I’d be very interested in any links or ref.s
…is there an Asian equivalent of Vinge or Kurzweil or even an Eliezer Yudkowsky?
No offense to those guys but that is not exactly a high standard. Are you asking about SF writers (futurists) or real scientists?
How about a Turing Award winner in theoretical computer science (complexity theory):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Yao
“We ought to dig them up and look at their DNA.”
We need to hit them all at once, because the cops would be ready the second time.
Razib, could you say a little nore about this? I’d be very interested in any links or ref.s
The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800. re: stuff like landscape painting, turns out the chinese were aware of the major technical innovations of western artists during the renaissance; but there were philosophical reasons that they refused to integrate these techniques into their arsenal. it wasn’t lack of the ability to master them, chinese painters in fact did work occasionally in the ‘western style,’ but it was explicitly an attempt mimic an alien art form. they just didn’t see the need to change their own canons.
“This could take many forms ranging from a heritable personality factor, to entirely social/cultural factors, to a complex interaction between the two”
Hong Kong and Singapore both were colonized by the British and settled by diverse waves of immigrant laborers and traders. I would imagine that much of the old world social conformity would’ve been difficult for the immigrants to uphold. Perhaps someone that’s lived there could enlighten us further, but both cities would seem to offer fertile ground for creative individuals. Does anybody know intellectual climate in HK/Singapore v.s. Taiwan/Japan/China/SK?
One consensus that we all seemed to have arrived at is that creativity, however it is measured, is an essential ingredient for economic and technological progress.
Forcing someone to leave your land doesn’t produce as many orphans as fighting in combat though.
By an estimate offered by the UNHRC, about 20% of boat people died at sea. I’d imagine that a lot of Vietnamese orphans in refugee camps probably made it West.
I recall reading that the Vietnamese government pursued anti-Chinese policies to the point where an estimated 700,000 ethnic Chinese fled the country. Quite a large number of Hmong were forced out too. So the Vietnamese diaspora seems to have a lot of interesting internal diversity.
On another note, IndoChinese refugees in the U.S. seem to be making a lot of economic progress in the U.S. So perhaps there’s some hidden genetic potential that’s being overlooked.
What about South Asians? When talking about Asian successes, wouldn’t the same question about East Asians vs. the west apply to them too?
But South Asians aren’t as conformist as East ones.
Conventional IQ-centric view of S Asia:
IQ AVG = 80-90, despite high IQ minority (e.g., Brahmin castes), so no puzzle in explaining why they might lag behind the West.
This easy psychometric explanation (whether true or not) is absent in the case of NE Asia since they seem to equal or surpass Europeans. So we have a puzzle to be explained by other factors.
There is a huge thread on Steve Sailer’s site arguing about S Asian IQs.
“never produced a Michelangelo or a Bernini.”
A silly and parochial remark. That’s like a Chinese person dismissing the accomplishments of European civilization by saying “Why didn’t they produce a Wang Wei or a Wang Xi Zhi?”
As far as the visual arts are concerned, I would assert that the eastern Asian tradition has demonstrated far greater innovation and creativity throughout the course of its history that Western art has during the past 500 years. The emphasis in Western art, up until its belated and generally failed efforts to change(the entire canon of contemporary Western art since Matisse and Picasso), was upon mimesis – we’ll just imitate nature as best we can. In Chinese art, the emphasis was always upon those traits are generally considered (by those who are poorly-informed)to be typical of Westerners – individuality and personal creativity.
ok. over 80 comments, pretty good. closin’ this down.
A silly and parochial remark. That’s like a Chinese person dismissing the accomplishments of European civilization by saying “Why didn’t they produce a Wang Wei or a Wang Xi Zhi?”
I was not dismissing the accomplishments of Chinese or any other civilization, I was merely pointing out that in one area where one would expect East Asians to trounce whites given their higher IQs and visuospatial superiority, the artistic record suggests otherwise. Doing so does not detract from Chinese accomplishment in any other area, nor even in sculpture.
I can believe that it was more a matter of taste than talent. But then, why the differences in taste? Perhaps there is something in the Western psyche that lends itself to the development of certain artistic styles, and something in the Eastern psyche that lends itself to others. Perhaps these slight individual tendencies among Westerners and East Asians were compounded in their respective civilizations and helped steer the development of each civilization’s art.