Why are Asians smart?
They seem to linger after a thought has terminated for most other people and see things from a wider scope than many of younger generations.
shareIt's all that wild, wet meat they eat !
Hey, cool!
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MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Why are Asians smart?
Also, why do they have dry earwax?
shareI grew up with an asian friend that went down a water slide backwards and knocked himself unconscious and almost drowned.
He also burned one of his eyebrows off smoking weed.
hi christina. If asians were intelligent they would not have accepted Christinity.
shareAsians aren't any smarter than anyone else but they don't romanticize ignorance. The sum of our modern society reflects centuries of progress and learning, Asians respect that. Some Americans think Jiffy Lube Joe's opinion on Climate Change or Covid19 is just as valid as a man who spent most of his adult life working on infectious diseases. If you are not educated on a subject, and education doesn't mean you watched a youtube video, then accept the advice from credible experts.
shareI'm an Asian living in Asia. I don't feel that's the case, we have stupid Asians glorifying other stupid Asians too here. American immigrants that came from Asia are maybe the ones perpetuating the stereotype that Asians are smart. Well, that's because the stupid, lazy and ignorant ones stay in Asia.
shareStupid people are everywhere but I'm talking about culture more so than individuals. Perhaps I'm wrong. I've been to Japan twice but that was decades ago.
shareThe person who discovered the shape of DNA and won a Nobel prize, James Watson would disagree with you.
He believed that DNA alone accounted for a persons IQ.
Watson did not believe that cultural or environmental factors had any effect on a person's intelligence.
I don't know that Watson believes that specifically, but it would be a simple minded position. IQ is an arbitrary test measurement, an indicator of certain types of intelligence. Change the test and you change the measurement. Intelligent parents will tend to produce intelligent offspring much like brown eyed parents will tend to produce brown eyed children but they can also have average children. And I can't really take any argument seriously that discounts the effect of environmental factors on behavior and performance. What do you suppose happens if an intelligent child is born to a poor family and suffers from malnutrition, or drinks from a contaminated water supply, or is born into a culture of ignorance and superstition and is brainwashed into believing that questioning religion leads to an eternity of suffering. Average children born into a good family that teach the value of education and reasoning, can and often do make significant contributions.
shareI agree with you. The current breakdown for nature/nurture is 60/40 from most scientist.
But Watson thinks it is more like 95/5. Environmental factors can play a role but not as nearly big as a persons DNA.
It is difficult to know just how many top scientist agree with him because it would be a career killer to do so.
To his point, you have many well fed, adequately educated Americans that are dumb as a rock.
Watson also made a comment on sunshine and it's effect on sex drive as to why there are so many 'Latin lovers'.
A well done 2 hour special on PBS that documented his role in discovering the shape of DNA. It was really well done, Nova(?) I think..
He did not want his beliefs about race and IQ to come out, but was betrayed by a attractive reporter/writer who was living on his estate for a year.
(Watson was a sucker for a pretty face)
Asians aren't any smarter than anyone else
East Asians have a slightly higher IQ even than whites.
Race IQ
Ashkenazi Jews (studies range from 104 to 115; the IQ of Sephardic Jews is estimated to be the same as Northern Europeans) 110
East Asians (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) 105
Europeans (Northern and Western Europe is 100; Eastern and Southeastern Europe is 95) 97
American Indians (North and South America) 90
Hispanic-Americans 89
Southeast Asians (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Borneo) 87
Pacific Islanders (Natives of New Zealand, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Hawaii) 85
African-Americans 85
South Asians (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf states, the Near East, and Turkey) 84
North Africans 84
Sub-Saharan Africans 70
Australian Aborigines 62 share
What study are you quoting and how is this realized in the real world, outside a testing environment or university?
shareWhat's the income, background, education and environment of those being tested? Also, who formulated the test since all tests have cultural biases. In other words, did the tests favor those with a western-style education? I'm certain an Australian Aborigine could formulate a test from his cultural background which would reverse the results.
shareWhat's the income, background, education and environment of those being tested?
The usual ones in that ethnic group, obviously. If you test Australian Aborigines, they'll have the usual conditions in Australian Aborigines.
In other words, did the tests favor those with a western-style education?
Nope, they don't, to the point East Asians score higher than western whites. The tests are designed to be purely abstract, without any cultural reference, and requiring zero education.
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Link?
shareI doubt that's possible.
sharedo you mean his comments on the tests?
nirvana is not for this world, but they actually do fine tune those tests to be as rigorous & fair as possible, & there are fairly simple statistical ways that you can tell if a specific question is biased against a specific group.
Can you give an example of a test that is applicable to a suit from Manhattan and a Bushmen (San) of Africa. It is impossible, IMO, to make a test that accounts for nutrition, education, leisure time, and exposure to complex problem-solving.
sharethe iq tests test general intelligence.
the things you listed, by my reading, all improve general intelligence, so i'm certainly not arguing that everything is static and set in stone & the avg scores that were listed above are a fixed number.
i know richard nisbett, to give the most famous example, has stated forcefully, most recently on michael shermer's podcast, that adoption studies show that most of the group differences will disappear once you account for class & cultural differences. at least that's how i understood what he said. if you go to shermer's show - about a month back - you can hear his interview.
i have to be somewhat agnostic on the topic, because i just don't know and won't pretend to know, but i think it absolutely could be the case that most of those group differences are attributable to those things. but that doesn't mean that the group differences don't exist as they're reported right now. they do, & they're constant, & they always go the same way.
the fact that we have the flynn affect, & that iqs are increasing over years, shows that there has to be an environmental component, whether it's exposure to tech, education, nutrition, something, that is increasing iq scores.
but as tests of general intelligence as things are right now, iq tests are reliable at giving us a current lay of the land. but i certainly don't believe we should look at those numbers as some kind of fixed, permanent state.
stuart ritchie's 'intelligence: all that matters' is a really good, tidy primer on the topic of iq, how we know the concept & the tests are valid, what they say, what they mean & don't mean & so on. good read.
Clearly some people are smarter than others. Intelligence is like humor, if you have it, you don't need to tell anyone. I started by saying Asians aren't smarter than anyone else, to which someone replied they score higher on IQ tests, but is that the same thing? If it is, then it should be directly linked to real world results, Asia should be leading the world in everything, but they aren't, not even close. I don't have anything more to say but I wanted to finish where I began.
sharei don't want to stretch out the discussion any more than we need to, but i will just quickly mention a few things in response.
iq tests are absolutely meaningful, and they do show real world results, in that people with higher scores on average do better academically, generally perform better at work, are more effective & efficient and so on. they do better on tests, they go to better schools and they do better at those schools than people who are admitted with lower scores.
regarding your comment on asia: there i would just say systems matter, economic policies matter. some asian countries have performed brilliantly. south korea is one of the freest countries in the world, and one of the most prosperous. others have systems that are less free, and the results show.
but if you compare asian populations & their success to other groups in north america, there are remarkable and really stark gaps in their favour. one small example: asians broadly grouped together significantly out earn the white population of the u.s. & in fact asian women now earn more on average than white men.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/monday-afternoon-links-all-graphic-edition/
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
and the stats on admissions to elite universities are even more stark. you may have heard about some of the controversies that have surrounded admissions to harvard & other ivy league schools, and the fact that asians with high test scores are regularly excluded, while people from other groups are regularly admitted with much lower test scores. that's being done to keep the scale from tipping too far in one direction in terms of racial mix - it's already disproportionately leaning asian.
i'm in the middle of something right now, and can't go looking for the stats/stories on that, but if you're interested i can find some stuff tomorrow or on the weekend.
anyway, happy movie-chatting to you.
You forgot the most important race of all. I'll amend your list:
Race IQ
Dolphins 417
Ashkenazi Jews (studies range from 104 to 115; the IQ of Sephardic Jews is estimated to be the same as Northern Europeans) 110
East Asians (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) 105
Europeans (Northern and Western Europe is 100; Eastern and Southeastern Europe is 95) 97
American Indians (North and South America) 90
Hispanic-Americans 89
Southeast Asians (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Borneo) 87
Pacific Islanders (Natives of New Zealand, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Hawaii) 85
African-Americans 85
South Asians (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf states, the Near East, and Turkey) 84
North Africans 84
Sub-Saharan Africans 70
Australian Aborigines 62
That makes good sense, but it's too bad, something that shouldn't have been a problem.
shareFake christina. Parodying a user.
sharePerhaps
who is she?
shareSome old imdb soapbox user. I hope its the real christina. could well be a parody. they used to cyberbully an innocent girl for years.
shareI paid close attention to Christina for a couple of years on the old IMDb boards. She fascinated me. And at the end of it I still couldn't decide whether she was what she seemed to be ( a girl with mental health issues ) or one of the most clever and inventive trolls on the boards.
While my personal experience hasn't shown this to be a universal truth, I think it's mainly because stereotyping can help as much as hurt. If you are expected to be highly intelligent, with no exceptions, and that's something that's pushed on you from birth, it can force you to meet those expectations, even subconsciously.
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