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Reason: None provided.

You're obviously not going to get an unassailable answer, becuase there is no exact cutoff point, and the aggressive tone you've approached this with tells me that there is no answer that is going to satify you.

However, if you press me I'd say the line is somwhere around 85 to 90, or about one standard deviation below the mean.

The US army doesn't accept anyone with an IQ under 83, because they've found that these people are not useful for anything and including them make it hard to maintain order.

I'd expect the ability to create and maintain an innovating and stable society to requre more brainpower than the absolute minimum for functioning in a strictly organized system like the army, so a bit above that doesn't sound unreasonable.

Anything under 79 is considered mentally retarded (with the higher range being classified as 'borderline retardation').

IQ is heritable, about level with height. And a nation having a low IQ average is not just a problem because they'll lack people who innovate and create and organize and stabilize. That too, but an even bigger problem is the strain the low IQ put on a society. IQ correlates with everything from financial success, health, life expectency, level of education, social status, emotional maturity, and productivity - to crime, impulse control, ability to delay gratification, violence, poverty, religious fanatisism, and competence.

With an average IQ of 85, 15% of your population is going to be in the 60s and lower. These people are extremely high maintenance, any country would struggle with more than a few % of people in this range, and especially countries that otherwise lack infrastructure due to the upper ranges being capped too (i.e. you'd expect Singapore to do better if you imported 1/4 of their population's worth of under 60 IQ indivuduals, because the population numbers above 100 are still going to be significant - not so with 85 average countries).

Does this satisfy you, or were you looking for something more like: "Now that you mention it, you're right, we can't know for sure, so therefore that must mean that IQ has no impact whatsoever on nationbuilding!".

3 years ago
1 score
Reason: Original

You're obviously not going to get an unassailable answer, becuase there is no exact cutoff point, and the aggressive tone you've approached this with tells me that there is no answer that is going to satify you.

However, if you press me I'd say the line is somwhere around 85 to 90, or about one standard deviation below the mean.

The US army doesn't accept anyone with an IQ under 83, because they've found that these people are not useful for anything and including them make it hard to maintain order.

I'd expect the ability to create and maintain an innovating and stable society to requre more brainpower than the absolute minimum for functioning in a strictly organized system like the army, so a bit above that doesn't sound unreasonable.

Anything under 79 is considered mentally retarded (with the higher range being classified as 'borderline retardation').

IQ is heritable, about level with height. And a nation having a low IQ average is not just a problem because they'll lack people who innovate and create and organize and stabilize. That too, but an even bigger problem is the strain the low IQ put on a society. IQ correlates with everything from financial success, health, life expectency, level of education, social status, emotional maturity, and productivity - to crime, impulse control, ability to delay gratification, violence, poverty, religious fanatisism, and competence.

With an average IQ of 85, a quarter of your population is going to be in the 60s and lower. These people are extremely high maintenance, any country would struggle with more than a few % of people in this range, and especially countries that otherwise lack infrastructure due to the upper ranges being capped too (i.e. you'd expect Singapore to do better if you imported 1/4 of their population's worth of under 60 IQ indivuduals, because the population numbers above 100 is still going to be significant - not so with 85 average countries).

Does this satisfy you, or were you looking for something more like: "Now that you mention it, you're right, we can't know for sure, so therefore that must mean that IQ has no impact whatsoever on nationbuilding!".

3 years ago
1 score