The Indian/Chinese IQ puzzle

well im an indian and i dont know what is my IQ level…

all i know 85% of indian population are struggling for 3 basic needs..FOOD, CLOTHS AND SHELTER..

so expecting high IQ level from them is nothing but a dumb idea…

Chinese claim they has high IQ level…but they made empty multi storied buildings in Beijing just to show their bright image to the world in Olympics…for that so many poor lost their home and kicked out from Beijing….if this is the outcome of high IQ then its good to have low IQ..

Brit Americans also have high IQ…good for them…they need it for OIL, DIVIDE n RULE and using 3RD WORLD human resource (read : poverty) for their growth..

a big fact is a 10 yrs old Indian boy posses more iq than a 30 yrs old american…(call center fact n i worked there)..

IQ is nothing but man made some questions and procedure to determine the brain’s working…and if u want ur brain working good then u need good bank balance, good food, good cloths, good home, good education….85% of Indian population don’t have that….so i am ok with low IQ level of INDIAN POPULATION..

after 200 yrs of british rule in 64 yrs (after independence) we made such a progress in economy as a whole, according to the economists (usa economists) India will overcome USA in 25-30 yrs in GDP…and usa economy is stuck now…its going down and down…

the thing is there are lots of things that makes a country…not IQ….

AND as a whole INDIA is INCREDIBLE….those who doubt it..come n visit INDIA…spend 2 months travelling different parts of india…u ll love n admire INDIA along with its low IQ…:)

Haha, don’t worry, I am the same age as you. Sorry if I sounded all intellectual and intimidated you.
And don’t worry, I am not offended by any of your comments, I too see it as a friendly discussion.

I was a bit surprised with those literacy stats. I was sure I heard somewhere that the two southern states have close to 100% literacy rate. But I guess it wasn’t a very reliable source.

But it still doesn’t change my opinion about education, because quality of education matters much more than number of people being educated. Bengal and Tamil Nadu have two of the oldest and most well established education systems. That’s partly thanks to the fact that Calcutta was the capital of British colony and similarly Tamil Nadu was for a period the French colony. And that did help in our success.

I have already stated that I am a proud bengali. But still, you and I obviously think differently. I just don’t think that it is a graceful act to put down other groups of people simply on the basis of their origin.
For example, Norway has produced Magnus Carlsen, Spain has Picasso, Portugal has Eusebio and I am sure Turks and Arabs have some amount of contribution as well.(Steve Job’s Father was muslim, if i recall) How much do we even know about these countries? To a large extent, we english speaking Indians see the world through American and British eyes/media, which can’t always be trusted.
Of course, you are right that France, England, Germany or Russia has produced far more scientifically. But that’s not the point.

Success and failure depends on a lot of factors. Have you read “outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell? Read it!
And the importance and mutability of IQ is a highly debatable issue. There was a good link provided by this guy called “racism is stupid”. Also read “mismeasure of man”. Another person was mentioning this book called “Genius Explained”. I plan on reading it as well.

I am sure you will find many well-informed British people who have very high opinions about Bengalis, or for that matter, about Indians in general. And I am also certain that there are British people who don’t see us as anything more than “those damn Indians”. It is no secret how many of those British generals who ruled here thought very lowly about the the entire Indian subcontinent.
There are all sorts of people everywhere. It’s pointless to generalize.

So, think about that Feynman video that I posted - what Feynman said about Honors and uniforms.
If you respect or disrespect someone purely on the basis of his “race”, then you are merely honouring an uniform (and that uniform is race), you are not honouring someone for something that they did individually.

(On a side note, I was a always a big fan of Tintin in Bangla. I grew up reading tintin comics and Bengalis in general like him. Today, I saw this bengali magazine which has Tintin wearing dhuti-panjabi on the cover. I couldn’t help but think that this is how we our Bengali culture knows how make good things from outside their own. After all, we Bengalis have the same spirit of adventure that he has.)

Anyway, it was nice talking with you.

@sampan and observer
There is no need to be an aged person to be sound more intellectual-trust me,a ten year old boy can more than two of us,and there are many 69 year old men who don’t know even 1% what we know.
next ,regarding those 3rd rated european country,i want to say that i talked about only academia.if you bring sports then we have dhyanchand,leander paes(who had made most winning record in davis cup),in both men and women category first person from asia to swim across english channel and many more-brojen das,arati saha etc and offcourse many othjer great like milkha sing.
thirdly,i did not differentiated according to race- what i tried to mean is that if we get data from different race in india,then it will be possible for us that who are lacking and why-then according to result we would be able to to workout the problems.it’s always better to to work on our weak point rather than working only on strong areas.
finally regarding those british what i have seen,in most cases the upper authority realised the problem and tried to do something,but it was always the people as middlemen did all sort of bloody discrimination-lord rayleigh understood the value of jc.bose’s work,whereas the presidency college principal made all discriminations against him.

You are right about the capacity of a 10 year old. I thought I somehow gave you the impression of being a 60 year old.

Anyway, I wans’t talking about just sports. Picasso is not a sports-person. Art requires intellect. So does chess.
Norway has also produced Niels Henrik Abel. Ever heard of him? His work was of phenomenal importance in mathematics. Sadly, he died at the age of only 26.
Spain is better known for art than science, but still had some contribution in science/math -for example there is a thing called “catalan numbers”(Catalunya is in Spain).
I don’t know much about portugal, but I don’t know portugese to know enough.
Besides, I doubt too many non-English speaker (like spanish or portugese) will come here to boast about “white superiority” in English.
Like I said, there are all kinds of people everywhere, do not generalize.

And that’s not even the point.
Historically, you will find that different groups of people were at the top of advancement at different periods. So, it makes no sense to look down upon others. For example, before renaissance, when Europe was still in dark-ages, middle eastern people were among the most advanced.

If you look at the Bengali greats, you will not find many who had a separation mentality.
Netaji Subhas wanted to create “azad hind fauj” and to shift the capital to Delhi.
Swami Vivakananda always said about how tolerance is a great virtue.
Gurudev Rabindranath , who is the only person who has written and composed the National anthem for two different countries, has written about both India and Bengal.
Bankim Chandra wrote “bande ma taram” with India in mind.
Do you know how Hindi became the national language of India? There was a vote, and there was a tie between Hindi and Bengali. The final vote was given by a Bengali, and he voted for Hindi!

As for weaknesses, I think we should look at our own weaknesses first. If we want to improve, we should be our best critic. The weaknesses we should be looking for are weaknesses in methods, not who are weak groups of people.

Also, I will be dropping sampan . I read some of his posts. I was inititally annoyed by his boasting, but he never really seriously insulted anyone.
I also read the posts by indians are smart that you mentioned. I totally disliked his boasting and was disgusted by his attacks at other groups. However, I did not see him get “destroyed”. It was like 5 vs 1, and those 5 were not any better than him, and he still had the final words and made some valid points (as well as some invalid points).  For example, he questioned the “aryan invasion theory” and I also have doubts about it.
The supporters of that theory could not say anything beyond pointing to higher castes having genes closer to Europeans. But that can be easily explained by the “out of africa theory”, which is the most widely accepted theory in the scientific community and “racism is stupid” listed some documentaries. According to that theory, India was originally populated by 2 different waves of migration. The first was the aborigines that populated australia,japan, south-east asia and also left small traces in India. The second was a large wave of migration that came from central asia around modern kyrgystan . From there, different groups left in different directions(europe, russia,india,china,america) at different times . One of those groups arrived in India. So this can explain the gene diversity. Of course, a lot of other invasions occured much later, but the “aryan” invasion is still very questionable. The later invaders might have just selected the higher castes already in place to mate with. (And even if “aryans” did “invade”, which I really doubt, there is no evidence that they ever “left India for Europe”. It is well known that people existed in northern Europe at the same time and they were not nearly as advanced). The aryan invasion theory was cooked up much earlier when one could not do large scale genetic studies to get a picture of the migration.

As a first-time reader of this thread, I have to say there are some superbly insightful posts here amid a sea of complete tosh. Many of the posts comparing China and India seem to focus on the current situation: China’s rise and India’s stagnation as the West declines.

It’s worth pointing out, I think, that there’s no indication that India will ever be anything more that it currently is. It’s completely irrelevant in the modern world, and it’s hard to see any relevance for India even within the next century. Put bluntly, if India disappeared from the face of the Earth at midnight tonight, hardly anyone would notice and even fewer would care.

China, on the other hand, has in 20 years made itself a kingpin of the world economy. What’s interesting is that there seems to be nothing to restrain this growth. China is just so good at everything that there’s little reason for India or other Asian nations to even bother tooling up to compete. China’s technological prowess has advanced at such a breakneck speed that it is now capable of space research and aeronautical engineering. Airbus already has a plant in China and Boeing is likely to follow suite.  With the transfer of technology that will take place, Chinese domestic manufacturers will emerge in a position to compete with the “big two.” In other words, you’re going to flying on Chinese-made jets pretty soon.

The Chinese have earned respect from the West for their transition from “international basket case” just 100 years ago to the economic and technological superpower that it is today. The question is: what has India been doing all this time?

Everything that India aspires to do, the Chinese have already done it. There just isn’t any need for another major player in world affairs. That means that if India ever decides that it doesn’t want to be an international basket case, then it’s going to have to do it alone. Sorry guys, you missed the bus.

@To sampan and observer

well!final post from me.finally both of us are agreeing in most of the facts-it wasnot the case when we started.

regarding abel-i can say just because there is an award in his name doesnot put him in the class of eulear,gauss,newton,leibnitz or ramanujan.

it is worldwide known fact today that real genius is born in field of creative and artistic field and in literature-not in science.in england there was a say if Shakespeare   would have wanted to become Newton he could have,but if Newton would have wanted to become Shakespeare,he could not have made it.

rabindranath tagore apart from two national song also wrote the lyrics of srilankan national anthem nama nama matha,which was translated to their language.

regarding national language,most of us don’t know that india don’t have any national language.i also knew it was hindi,but a tamil guy once rectified me,and later checked it-he was right-hindi and english are our official language.

now the most important point-I THINK THE TIME HAS COME FOR ME TAKE BACK MY OWN WORDS.I SAID PEOPLE FROM CHINA ARE HUMBLE_NO THEY ARE NOT!!!

actually most of the post in this blog has come from very ordinary with least amount of knowledge.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST NERD WAS C.M AND NOW IN THE ABOVE POST_DUDE JUST LIKE INDIA IF CHINA IS BEING DESTROYED TODAY NOBODY WILL FEEL YOUR PRESENCE APART FROM OLYMPIC.

finally going to the point which SAMPAN STATED THAT CITY CALCUTTA WILL SINGLE HANDEDLY BEAT ENTIRE CHINA_THAT CITY HAS PRODUCED FOUR NOBEL AS ASIA"S FIRST AND MANY NOBEL PRIZE WINNING WORKS IN MEDICINE(ALL FROM ENTIRE ASIA WHICH SAMPAN MENTIONED)PHYSICS AND OFF COURSE ONE OF GREATEST INVENTION OF ALL TIME BY SIR J.C BOSE.CHINA HAD NOT PRODUCED A SINGLE NOBEL APART FROM PEACE WORKING IN CHINA.

SO ALL YOU CHINESE BAD ASS WHO ARE BOASTING HOW MANY FIELD MEDAL OR DUMB MEDAL YOU HAVE WON I TELL YOU WHAT-THE CITY CALCUTTA IS BETTER THAN YOUR ENTIRE FUCKIN CHINA.

and please don’t think that people of west love you-in us most of the students tell that in paper based subject test of gre /sat-u guys do cheating.and if you go through the comments from people of west in this blog-you will find it.

Well, if that was your final post, then I guess there is no point in continuing the discussion. And in that case this will be my final post as well. Anyway, I am glad you and I agreed on most issues.

I will still say a couple of things-

I don’t know how to measure the class of a mathematician, but Abel’s work really was of phenomenal importance. He opened the pathway to what is known as abstract algebra. And before him there was a blind search for quintic(5th degree) equations for centuries and no one could make a dent on this very important problem. Abel was the first person to show that you can’t solve the quintic using “normal” ways.
It’s funny that another founder of abstract algebra - Galois - also died at mere 20.

Nope, I am pretty sure Hindi IS the national language because I have read it in books published by the National Council of Education, as well as reading it in GK books. The constitution of India in 1950 originally stated hindi as THE “official language”.

English was much later added as a “subsidiary official language” precisely because a large number of Tamil and and also many Telugu speakers failed to accept Hindi as the official language. So, what the Tamil dude told you is hardly surprising.

Anyway, it was nice talking with you. Bye!

OK, I just realized that you were talking about the “national language” and not “official language” which I always thought could be used interchangeably.
The tale about voting that I said was related to the selection of official language.

Anyway just look at former Soviet Union and how their economy has gone downhill since they got divided.
Like they say, ” the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” and “united we stand, divided we fall”.
Instead of petty fights within ourselves, we should become united.

Once again, Bye!

The following is all just hypothesis from what I gathered so far.

I think, as it relates to the concentrating of intelligence in the higher Hindu castes, the idea of an Ashkenazi-esque late IQ boom would do well in explaining the evolutionary transcendence of the upper Brahmin class (given that I doubt any group of any class entering India had IQ levels so high!), but I also feel this transcendence also evolved by a selection bias towards the genes of certain groups that proved to be better fit in India’ environment (ie, preference for the appearance of the lighter invaders). This explains the historic racism - in a way, it had to do with ancient Indian’s seeing the coincidental intelligence (along with other advantageous traits) and light skin/caucasoid appearance of their invaders and concluding that whiteness brings better luck (when it was really other traits that brought the invaders’ success). But, I also feel that lighter skin and a more Caucasoid appearance was to be favored regardless by the mechanism of sexual selection - its just that what I stated in the last sentence probably intensified this selection.

My point - So you see, I just don’t trust views of the caste system being primarily a racist motive - I feel it was the first successful eugenics project, that had the primary objective of preserving and promoting the more advantageous genes in the very uneven gene pool present in India from some ancient time/event (uneven due to the sudden emergence of populations that had met after thousands of years of separate evolutionary pathways coming out of Africa or wherever).

Like any form of artificial selection, these selection mechanisms weren’t perfect, nor do I think the attempt at eugenics was deliberate - but I will say there must have been some subconsciously felt crisis of losing the evolutionary advantages that some groups possessed, which prodded these groups to save their traits by some means. Normally this is done by killing and exterminating the enemy, but in this rare instance, it was done by tolerating the enemy as long as a social setting could be created where this enemy couldn’t damage the dominant social groups gene pool.

Here’s how all this relates to the paradox of Southern India having a higher IQ: India’s social strategy of isolating and concentrating favored genes into higher castes meant that, to some extent, darker skin in potential mates COULD have been overlooked and tolerated in the interest of inculcating other, more important premium traits that some darker individuals offered, eg, intelligence, vitality, and so forth (in their breeding methods, ie, arranged marriage). In other words, classic India could have relaxed racial intermixing taboos when the tradeoff was worth enduring for other premium traits (and obviously racial taboos WERE broken, which figures why no caucasion subclass remains in India). We can all imagine the most important premium traits generally had to do with superior wit.

So, moving along to the point - Why believe this? What does this explain? A lot. This explains why South Indian upper caste Brahmins have higher IQ’s than the ones in North India. Its possible that North India had a mean higher avg. gene pool (from outside invaders) to begin with, but South Indians may have had a more successful caste system that took its relatively lower IQ gene pool (in the beginning) and more efficiently packed the better part of that gene pool into its elite castes.

So we have two simultaneous evolutionary mechanisms occurring throughout India hitherto: one to North India’s greater advantage (better genetic pool w/regard to IQ conducive traits), and the other to South India’s (better genetic selection though out of a poorer gene pool). I suppose contemporary IQ results show that the mechanism dominating South India won out on the whole, explaining the higher IQ of their Brahmin class. What explains South India’s darker skinned Brahmins? The darker skin of Southern Indians Brahmins seems to be a remnant of the fact that it had fewer of the “high IQ” Caucasion invaders in the beginning (compared to their Northern counterparts). However, these South Indian Brahmins were probably better able to extract the best genes out of this group and proliferate them by…...I suppose a marriage system that is/was very cerebral selective (and I mean just as well with the indigenous population (thus it was perhaps a geekier culture, ie, “please marry with my daughter, o nerdy high caste one. In addition to her melodious voice and fine cooking skills, my lower so and so caste daughter is also nerdy and can keep up with your wits”)).

Incredible. The ancient Indians were so brilliant. You may call them cruel, but I believe the founders of their culture could have been 1000x worse if they wished. In those days, anywhere on civilized earth, living a complete, dignified, happy life was probably a rare luxury. 

Again, note this is all just a hypothesis and I am not an academic expert on any subject. This view just made so much sense to me, and I’ve had this in minds for years - so I had to speak out.

Wow, a lot of comments about the Indian “caste system”.

It’s funny that so many westerners talk about Indian “caste system”. I have lived in INDIA my entire life and I have NEVER seen anyone being discriminated or bad-mouthed because of his or her caste. I never even thought that it was such a big issue until I started reading the comments here.

For example, there is no such word equivalent of “nigger” or “monkey” in India to refer to lower castes.
Sure, there may be a few upper caste people who privately believe that they are “superior”, and certain religious practices are caste-specific, but that’s about it.

It’s like people are looking for an excuse - “Look how evil those Indians are-  they have a caste system!”. LOL!

What a load of crap, Blues. Calling somebody an ‘untouchable’ in India is equivalent to calling somebody a ‘nigger’ here. I can tell you from personal experience that Indians do not take being called an untouchable very lightly.

No high-caste Hindu calls any low-caste Hindu “untouchable”.

They call them:

Dalit
Mleccha
Kala / Kali (nigger)
Sudra
Namasudra

I have lived in INDIA my entire life and I have NEVER seen anyone being discriminated or bad-mouthed because of his or her caste.

Because it works so smoothly.

No high-caste Hindu calls any low-caste Hindu “untouchable”.

They call them:

Mleccha
Kala / Kali (nigger)

Actually it’s the people living to the west of India such as afghans, Persians, Greeks etc who were called mlecchas or barbarians by the Hindu Brahmins. Even the punjabis at one time were called mlecchas. It has nothing to do with caste.

Also the Brahmins themselves are what would be considered “niggers” in the west. And they created their gods and goddesses in their own image: the black goddess Kali and the black god Krishna

I have lived in INDIA my entire life and I have NEVER seen anyone being discriminated or bad-mouthed because of his or her caste.

You are obviously a shameless and stupid liar. In other words a typical Hindu.

Stupid because anyone can google and find out the truth…

The ancient Indians were so brilliant.

So says the black south Indian Brahmin

Yes it was so brilliant of the brahmins to conceive of the ridiculous caste system, the cruel and indefensible animal and human sacrifices of the Vedas, the burning alive of widows, temple prostitution, child marriage, and numerous other evil practices and silly superstitions.

i as a calcuttan can proudly say we have produced better talent than many of so called first world’s city…..but rest of the world doesnot know much about it.

Another irrational low IQ deluded Hindu. The world knows that your Calcutta is synonymous with shithole. You should be ashamed to be from such a horrible place. The Bengalis are probably the poorest, most malnourished people on the planet. It must have taken a shit load of “talented” calcuttans to achieve that. And even your educated compatriots think it makes sense to sacrifice goats to the black goddess Kali. If the British hadn’t banned it you would still be sacrificing humans to Kali! And burning your widows alive!

All the Bengalis you keep boasting of were educated by the British. What have you done since your masters abandoned you?

IQ tests, test intellectual conformity, not creativity and originality. This would explain the Asian high IQ’s. They as a people are the ultimate conformists.

In IQ tests there is typically only one answer to the problem. That problem being a social conformity to reason. But everyone knows that Genius’s and all of the greatest developments in the world are not the product of conformity. Conformity never breeds creativity. We can see this in the lack of influence the Asian population has had on Science. China used to be called the “sick man” of Asia. Their population is massive and their contribution to innovation is almost nil. We can see this lack of originality in their adoptation of European philosophies, I.e. Communism.

Friedrich Nietzsche and other Philosophers have critized Asians. Nietsche used the words “Pallid osification” to describe Orientals.

Pallid: lacking sparkle or liveliness.

Osification: The process of becoming set and inflexible in behavior, attitudes, and actions. Inflexible conformity, rigid unthinking acceptance of social conventions.

The reality is Asian people have yet to understand that laws and rules are arbitrary. Europeans make the rules and Asian’s follow them.

It also doesn’t make sense that Asian’s are considered smart because of the fact that they have destroyed their own countries. This is due to over-population and their basic lack of enviromental understanding.

It is also common scientific fact that women who have many children are ignorant, and those who have less children are more intelligent. This has already been proven in studies. So it seems strange to say that Asians are smart when the obviousness of their backwards countries, and medieval lifestyle makes them contrary to that premise.

Europeans have the most advanced civilizations and every other race has yet to meet these levels other than the Japanese. The Japanese only being good at copying other people’s inventions and making them better. Other than that their original creativity is lacking as well. They took American cars and made them better. They took the German camera and made it better. And they took German steel and made it better. Otherwise the greatest advances still come from Europeans and Jews. Other than that the Orientals have yet to produce an Einstein or a Thomas Edison.

When it comes to Black people. It makes sense that they have low intellectual comformity, I.e. IQ tests. They are far too creative to be trapped in this unoriginal form of conditioning. You can tell their creative capacity in their athletics, music, dance, and the way they talk. They by far exceed the Asiatic races in these areas. Being better singers, musicians ect. Blacks far exceed Asians in emotive expression. In all of North America there is only one or two famous high-paid Asian actors.

@bliss
Another irrational low iq deluded hindu
seems like u r just another bloody muslim or a poor christian with single digit iq-it was rammohan roy-the father of modern india who stopped sati-the process of throwing widows into fire and another named as vidyasagar who started women’s education in india and also started widow marriage in india.and all boses,ramanujan,raman,chandrasekhar did their work without the help of any british-and in last 30 years mother teressa,amartya sen,md.yunus,dr subhas mukherjee rose when their were no brtish.but as i said a dickhead rascal with single digit iq doesnot know anything about this.
and finally it’s not the bengalis that are poor in calcutta-it’s because of the migrant from up,bihar and muslims who give calcutta the bad name-may be u belong to that category.

@bliss

well well well-look this mongrel bliss had again made a comeback in this blog.i went through ur comments from earlier posting-and realised just like that c.m idiot(may be he is ur dear one),ur another fool chinese living in calcutta-who even after mixing with intellectual bengalis,can’t speak a single sentence in english.already debutant had given u the answer-i promised that i will not post again-but considering ur sadistic condition-i tell u that my iq is not low-it’s more than every goofy dumb chinese or vietnamese living in calcutta-dude 6 years ago when i tested,it was 173-and for shake of ur information-i can solve arithmatic problems which an average brain takes atleast 5 minutes,within 30 seconds even without calculator-but i did not go any stupid math contest like imo-and for shake of ur information i am right now a physics doctorate student in one of the ivy league university in us.

and for last time i will again remind all chinese jerk in this blog-that the city calcutta is enough to beat ur entire fuckin china or vietnam.

@debutant
friend,this bastard bliss is not from india-so don’t say he is from bihar or up-this donkey is probably a pakistani-and u know this so called camel and goat muslim pakistani love to hate hindu,india and off course bengalis-and u also know that this basterd’s are biggest friend of china-that’s why he was boasting how many field or dumb medal the chinese had won-otherwise it will be a chinese or vietnamese who had lived in india.
@bliss
if u r from pakistan then the entire world knows about u.and if ur a chinese-then i had already given reply for all u dick heads.

regarding giving goat to god-well although it’s an obsolete custom today,but still better than eating snakes or cockroach.or lot better than killing millions of people which u muslim terrorist do all over the world.

but irrespective of a pakistani goat or a chinese u r-the fact of the matter remain same-that calcutta is better than both those shithole called pakistan or relatively better china.and remember hindu bengalis are way more richer compared to average per capita income of the country-it’s migrant from backward non bengali states like up,bihar-who costitute nearly 48% population of calcutta make the city filthy and dirty(amongst which 30 percent muslim goat are there).

and bengali hindu’s have more high iq than any other ethnic in south asia or compared to chinese.