Update

iq.md

@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@
 Please wear a hard hat when reading this page.
 ```
 
+*See also https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient.*
+
 IQ (intelligence quotient) is a non-perfect but [still kind of useful](good_enough.md) measure of one's intelligence, it is a numeric score one gets on a standardized test that tries to estimate his intellectual ability at different tasks ([logic](logic.md), [memory](memory.md), language skills, spatial skills, ...) and express them with a single number. The tests are standardized and the scoring is usually tuned so that the value 100 means average intelligence -- anything above means smarter than average, anything below dumber than average. IQ is a quite controversial topic because it shows intellectual differences between [races](race.md) and sexes and clashes with [political correctness](political_correctness.md), there is also a great debate about "what intelligence even is" (i.e. what the test should measure, what weight should be given to different areas of intelligence), if it is even reasonable to simplify "intelligence" down to a single number, how much of a cultural bias there is (do we really measure pure intellectual capacity or just familiarity with some concepts of our western culture?) and the accuracy of the tests is also highly debated (which can be an issue if we e.g. start using IQ tests to determine who should get higher education and who shouldn't) -- nevertheless it's unquestionable that IQ DOES correlate with intellectual abilities, IQ tests are a tool that really does something, the debates mostly revolve around how useful the tool is, how it should be used, what conclusions can we make with it and so on. Basically only people with the lowest IQ say that IQ is completely useless. The testing of IQ was developed only during 20th century, so we don't know IQs of old geniuses -- if you read somewhere (including this article) that Newton's IQ was 200, it's just someone's wild guess.
 
 IQ follows the normal [probability](probability.md) distribution, i.e. it is modeled by the [bell curve](bell_curve.md) that says how many people of the total population will fall into any given range of IQ score. Though this has been challenged too, one of the basic laws of human stupidity says that the probability that someone is stupid is independent of any other of his characteristics (education, profession, race, sanity, ...). There are various IQ scales, almost all use the Gaussian (bell) curve that's centered at 100 (i.e. 100 is supposed to mean the average intelligence) and have [standard deviation](standard_deviation.md) 15 (but other have been used as well) -- this is what we'll implicitly suppose in the article from now. This means that about 2/3rds of people will fall in the range 85 to 115 but no more than 1% will have IQ higher than 145 or lower than 55. Sometimes you may also encounter so called **percentile** which says what percentage of population is below your IQ.
@@ -64,6 +66,8 @@ TODO: more details, history, where to measure (web vs Mensa vs SAT etc.)
 
 *IQ distribution along with approximate placement of certain groups and individuals (each line represents another Gaussian distribution so the borders aren't strict). Notice how interesting people are either far to the right or far to the left. Also notice how the smartest you've rarely heard of while you've heard of all the dumbest.*
 
+The following are **average IQ values for various selected countries**, according to the book *IQ and the Wealth of Nations* (SD 15). [Australia](australia.md): 98, Brazil: 87, Canada: 97, China: 100, Cuba: 85, Croatia: 90, [Czechia](czechia.md): 97, Ethiopia: 63, Equator Guinea: 59 (dumbest country of all), France: 98, Greece: 92, India: 81, Iran: 84, Italy: 102, Japan: 105, [Mexico](mexico.md): 87, [Nigeria](nigeria.md): 67, Spain: 97, South Korea: 106 (smartest country of all), [UK](uk.md): 100, [USA](usa.md): 98, Zimbabwe: 66.
+
 **IQ and [race](race.md) and [sex](sex.md)**: IQ is correlated with race and sex. The following is a comparison of average IQs of groups with various combination of the two factors:
 
 *men (Jew) > men (Asian) > men (White) > men (Brown) > women (Jew) > women (Asian) > women (White) > women (Brown) > men (Black) > women (Black)*
@@ -76,7 +80,7 @@ TODO: more details, history, where to measure (web vs Mensa vs SAT etc.)
 
 { It's still more and more complicated the more you think of it, even for example success in mathematics may sometimes depend less on pure math skills and more on non-mathematical kind of intelligence, e.g. that of observation skills and communication -- that's what academia is about. Yes, you need some creativity, but the ability to quickly understand ideas of others may sometimes be superior, an idea you "steal" from someone else is as useful as idea you came up with yourself, you need to catch many ideas of others and connect them together; on the other hand struggling with communication is sometimes simply like not speaking a common language at all. Thinking back I for one have always been quite retarded at understanding what others wanted to say, even simple things, so in classes I frequently wouldn't understand what was being taught while others understood, but it wasn't because I wouldn't understand the concept itself, I rather didn't understand the way the teacher explained it because (I think) I think differently about things. When we were given tasks to solve on our own, I usually beat my classmates because that was only about creative intelligence, not communication, and in this I think I was better than most of my peers. I didn't go for PhD later on while some of my classmates did -- TBH I don't think it's because they were necessarily more intelligent in general (many of them for sure were), but because they felt better in this world of communication, sharing papers, talking to others, understanding their ideas and collaborating, they had the "better mix" of intelligence for today's academic world -- this I always had problems with, so it contributed to my decision to not go there. This is just to show that this world is quite complex. ~drummyfish }
 
-**Fun fact**: in some US countries idiots and similar low IQ level classes are legally prohibited from voting :D
+**Fun fact**: in some US states idiots and similar low IQ level classes are legally prohibited from voting :D
 
 It's been observed that the **IQ of a group** is roughly equal to the IQ of its least intelligent member divided by the number of group members.