Meritocracy and intelligence levels will predominate the global economy and politics.
There’s hope for the future. I believe that in the foreseeable future, the world will no longer be ruled by an oligarch class but by people of high intelligence.
Fascinated with the high IQ phenomenon, particularly in China, I have been searching for the possible causes and consequences of IQ differences for our Western society.
It is worth noting that there is nothing mathematically wrong with IQ calculations, as mathematics. You give a million people an IQ test, plot the tests on paper, and you get the famous “bell” or “normal” curve. This does not create data, distort data, or hide data. It just displays them, as does a pie chart or bar graph. It is used in thousands of calculations from physical chemistry to failure rates of engine parts. In a sentence, the interpretation may be debatable, but the distribution is not.
In Thoughts, Unoriginal but Perhaps of Value, on Brains, by Fred Reed – The Unz Review[1]
Mensa
I have some friends, both in China and in the West, who are member of MENSA [2], the club of people with a high IQ. They are in several ways extraordinary people and therefore I highly appreciate the conversations with them. A conversation with high IQ people is challenging in a pleasant way. I love to observe them in meetings. They’re humble, trying to hide their high IQ. They’re not very talkative, always wait for their turn to speak. Almost all high IQ people also have a high EQ[3]. Because of the high speed of their thinking process, they have answers and solutions long before anybody else. They’re easily bored, waiting for the other 98% of the people, struggling through their process of thinking and speaking.
MENSA China was formally recognized as an emerging Mensa group in 2011, making them one of the youngest among the MENSA groups worldwide. MENSA China was set up by Yang Bingyang [4], president of the Chinese branch of Mensa International. In the test centres in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanchang, they get more than 80 new candidates per month. [5]
Almost all Chinese MENSA members are Xuéshén, “study gods”.
The Chinese gāokǎo
The Chinese National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), commonly known as the gaokao (高考; gāokǎo) is by far the toughest exam at this globe. It is taking 10 hours over two days. In 2022, almost 12 million students have participated in the gaokao. The average pass rate is 92%.
Whoever passes the 高考 gāokǎo has an IQ of at least 140 points.[6] The Chinese education system is producing 11 million > 140 IQ people per year; by far the most in STEM fields of study. Through the meritocratic system of CPC admission (only 1 in 10 candidates make it through the selection) the highest IQs are are destined for a career in politics.
Xuéshén, xuébà, xuéruò and xuézhā
In China, college and university students divide each other into 4 categories. The most common are the 学霸 xuébà and the 学弱 xuéruò. The classification in these 4 categories, however, is never used as a reproach or to outdo each other. [7]
Those at the absolute top aren’t the xueba, but the xueshen, or “study gods,” who earn their high scores effortlessly. The studyholic xueba, who must work harder for their grades, occupy the second tier, though considering the rarity of xueshen, xueba are still safely within the high-status category.
At the other end of the spectrum are the underachievers, or xuezha, who are known for their low grades and low levels of effort. Below them are the true “losers” known as xueruo.[8]
The four-tier status system:
1 学神 xuéshén, “study gods”
2 学霸 xuébà, “study bully”[9]
3 学弱 xuéruò “weak learner”
4 学渣 xuézhā, “slacker student”, underachievers, scum.
Arranged on a horizontal scale “study hard/study little” and a vertical scale “high grades/low points”, the chart looks like this:
These are the young people who all made it through the Gaokao, all having an IQ of more than 140. They will participate in the worldwide competition in a few years’ time.
International Mathematical Olympiad
The 2022 International Mathematical Olympiad [10] was held in Oslo, Norway from 6 to 16 July 2022. There were 104 teams from countries all over the globe. Each team consisted of 6 members. There were only 68 female participants. Countries as Canada, the USA, Australia and others had sent a six-member team with exclusively Asian, mostly young students from Chinese descent. As always, China won the competition by a big margin. All the 6 Chinese team members won gold medals.
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The importance of education in China
To once again highlight what capital importance the Chinese attach to education:
1. There are a total of 3253 primary and secondary schools in Shanghai. Each of those school principals has a personal limousine with a driver.
2. The tiger mothers, a typical Chinese phenomenon. Read: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (2011)
The beauty of Mathematics
Mathematics is everywhere in our daily life, often at places or in objects where we don’t expect it. The beauty of mathematics is because of its depth or orderliness, abstractness, purity and simplicity. Mathematics is often described as an art form, as a creative activity, comparable with music and poetry.[11] After the golden ratio, a very simple mathematical equation, discovered more than 2500 years ago, many other aesthetic equations were discovered: the Penrose tiling, Kepler triangle, Fibonacci numbers, Lucas sequence, … All producing beautiful geometric shapes.
Car designers and stylists who master these mathematical equations are able to create extremely beautiful vehicles. Unfortunately not all cars at our roads are designed with these simple rules in mind and it is not too difficult to notice which OEM’s make use of mathematic equations in their design process.
We’re all engineers, whether we’re a designer, manager, quality, or sales specialist. All IT activity and computer science is basically mathematics.[12] Without mathematics, there’s no gaming industry, no chip making industry, no space travel, no bank account security, …
Beauty and art are actually pure mathematics. One side of math that we’ve never seen is the side that’s imbued with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art.[13]
We appreciate the beauty of new products, new projects or people working together in a harmonious way. These products are invented, designed, produced and sold by STEM graduates. The number of high ability STEM PhDs in China, compared to the United States, is in an order of magnitude of 10 times larger.[14]
Beauty and art are actually pure mathematics. One side of math that we’ve never seen is the side that’s imbued with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art.[15]
Chinese high IQ people
During all these years in China, I have seen quite unusual things there, things that might be common for Chinese people, but very extraordinary in my eyes. I have met and cooperated with dozens of high IQ people, some of them extraordinary and strange.
Chinese people, on average read five times more books than people in the West. I have seen people reading 6 to 10 books per week with ease. To keep that pace, they are flipping pages at a speed that I can only read one paragraph. It is as if they take a photo in their brain of each page and straight away move to the next page. And mind you, they have meticulously stored every word on their hard drive. I have heard them literally quoting half pages more than 3 weeks after they read the book.
People with a high IQ are extremely fast thinkers. In that way, they can search their knowledge database in milliseconds. A conversation with high IQ people is challenging in a pleasant way.
When I was living in Suzhou, working in Wuxi, I instructed my HR manager (a STEM graduate !) to put “高的智商” (high IQ) in the job requirements. I wouldn’t dare to do that in Europe. And indeed, the engineers and division managers were very smart. Pleasant and efficient to work with — but difficult to keep, even with a high renumeration.
All that brought me to the conclusion that in China, there must be many, many more extremely bright people than in Europe or the USA.
The big mistake that many western media and academics make (or maybe it is a narrative they want to push through) is that besides IQ, there’s EQ. And that EQ is very important. And that it is a zero-sum game. That’s absolutely not true. On the contrary: high IQ people are most often also very caring and emotionally intelligent people. [16]
I am not a scientist, specialised in IQ. In my article “The Dictatorship of the Idiots” [17], I’ve just put together a few existing studies on IQ. And concluded that Chinese politicians must have significantly higher IQ’s than western politicians. With all its consequences. Simply compare Wang Yi with Anthony Blinken.
The hard studying and great emphasis on education in China not only originates from Confucianism but has also been carried out with even greater conviction since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. In September 1951, during a National Holiday, Mao Zedong gave a beautiful notebook to little Ma Mao. He wrote on the title page: 好好学习天天向上 Hǎo hào xuéxí tiāntiān xiàngshàng, study hard, improve every day. That short phrase has since become a standard expression among young Chinese.
Unfortunately, it is also the cause of huge pressure on Chinese students. Recently, the Chinese government has eased that pressure somewhat by banning all private extracurricular courses.
STEM versus sociology
Sociologists (the humanities, the alpha “scientists”)[18] apply a quite different thinking pattern than STEM graduates. (STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)
In most western countries, the overwhelming majority of university courses are sociology oriented. But in China it is the other way around. STEM graduates are more highly regarded in China than sociologists. Sociology in China is taught in an almost mathematical way; field research, facts and figures dominate the curriculum. At Chinese universities, AutoCAD is a mandatory course for bachelor’s in law students.
While in Western countries, sociology is taught in a much more philosophical way. Western sociologists are inculcated to follow/believe sources and people considered credible. That is a dangerous path that opens the door to political and social indoctrination. Western sociologists, all of them liberals, are the new “intelligentsia”, they’re IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot).[19] They are an aristocracy thinking they’re smarter than everybody else.
STEM graduates, because of their education and their daily work activities, have no other option than to think more systematically and not to rely on other people’s opinions to make their decisions. It is no wonder that they have on average a 15 points higher IQ than sociologists.
Confucius and Plato
It is certainly remarkable that both Confucius (551 – 479 BCE) and shortly after him also Plato (424 – 347 BCE) classified the morality of people into 6 categories.[19]
For them, people are classified according to their increasing moral development going in parallel with their intellectual and practical achievements. It was understood that the more someone understands (inner and outer) reality and is able to do things properly, the more he will be able to be free from his ego-centered preoccupations and consequently will truly care for the others and will be ready to provide the appropriate help, skilfully and in a respectful manner when needed.
Confucius relied heavily on the I Ching (c. 1000 BCE) for his Eight Trigrams theory, while Plato based his Politeia theory on Socrates (470 – 399 BCE).
For them, there is no IQ-EQ dichotomy.
Conclusion:
I leave it to you, my dear reader, to draw the conclusions from all this for the future of the West.
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[1] Fred Reed: “To See Why, Just Look Around”
https://www.unz.com/freed/thoughts-unoriginal-but-perhaps-of-value-on-brains/
[2] Mensa was founded in England in 1946 by Roland Berrill and Lance Ware. Mensa’s original aims were, as they are today, to create a society that is non-political and free from all racial or religious distinctions.
MENSA: 98 percentiles = 148 at the CFIT (Culture Fair Intelligence Test) https://www.mensa.org/
[3] IQ and EQ, not at all a zero-sum game; on the contrary. Most people with a high IQ also have a high (but difficult to measure) EQ. 方腾波。
[4] Yang Bingyang 杨冰阳 07.11.2012 “Those who are more beautiful than me are not as smart as me, and vice versa”
[5] High-minded group with an intelligent outlook: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-11/07/content_15885300.htm
[6] Godfree Roberts in a private message to me 2021
[7] 姜易林 Jiāng Yìlín in her book “Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition,” Princeton 22.08.2022 https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691210483/study-gods
[8] 姜易林 Jiāng Yìlín in an article at Sixth Tone: “Why Chinese High Schoolers Are Gatekeeping Nerddom” 24.06.2022 https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010607/why-chinese-high-schoolers-are-gatekeeping-nerddom
[9] xuébà, “study bully” https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AD%A6%E9%9C%B8
[10] International Mathematical Olympiad https://www.imo-official.org/year_info.aspx?year=2022
[11] Bertrand Russell: Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
[12] The Beauty of Mathematics in Computer Science by Jun Wu 2011
[13] Love and Math, The Heart of Hidden Reality, by Edward Frenkel 09.09.2014
http://www.ams.org/notices/201409/rnoti-p1056.pdf
[14] Xú Dào Huī (Stephen Hsu) Physics professor at Harvard, Yale, Oregon and Michigan State University
in an interview with Richard Hanania on 12.02.2022:
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/the-future-of-humanity-is-ivf-babies?r=16k
[15] Love and Math, The Heart of Hidden Reality, by Edward Frenkel 09.09.2014
http://www.ams.org/notices/201409/rnoti-p1056.pdf
[16] IQ and EQ, not at all a zero-sum game; on the contrary. Most people with a high IQ also have a high (but difficult to measure) EQ. 方腾波。
[17] The level of intelligence of Chinese and Western politicians. Frans Vandenbosch 29.06.2022
https://yellowlion.org/a-comparative-study-on-the-level-of-intelligence-of-chinese-and-western-politicians/
[19] David V. MacCollum in Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI) 17.07.2017
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2017/07/17/intellectual-yet-idiot-iyi/
[18] Prof. Wouter Duyck RUG, in a lecture for MR Noordrand 0n 12.12.2019:
Sociology =
psychology, communication sciences, pedagogy, political sciences, law, criminology, speech therapy, PE and movement sciences, philosophy, language and literature, Eastern and African languages and cultures, morals, art sciences, archaeology, anthropology , medicine, veterinary science, rehabilitation sciences and physiotherapy, pharmaceutical sciences, applied linguistics.
[19] Thank you Lí Jūn 黎 君 (Quan Le) for the reference.
The Western world is in decline