[tptacek]

This is obviously, fatuously untrue. The problem has nothing to do with uncertainty about the validity of IQ. The problem is that most countries don't routinely administer IQ tests. I'm always struck by Americans who make this claim, given that virtually nobody in the US is ever asked to take a real IQ test.

I encourage you to cite the actual source you claim has authoritative "average IQ" scores broken down by country. According to you, they're readily available with a simple Google search. Fire away!

[threethirtytwo]

https://www.technotheoria.org//p/most-accurate-national-iqs-... from google.

Also every measurement on google is remarkably inline with each other even though it's from sources that are noisy.

A better way to put it. If you have 20 noisy/biased sources of data but each source is unique and gathered in distinct ways. And all 20 sources show a unique pattern of Asia beating the US... then it's quite likely, the consistency is NOT noise.

[tptacek]

Just skimming, and tell me if I'm wrong, but the preprint this article is about acknowledges the obvious fact that IQ tests are not generally administered across broad populations of countries and attempts to reconstruct IQ from available statistics of income, life expectancy, and educational attainment. I'm sure if I dig deeper into its cites we'll get back to the same online IQ quiz most of these IQ maps end up citing, too.

[threethirtytwo]

It's a blurry lens. But it's also the best lens that we got.

Also if we have 30 blurry lenses looking at the same thing from different angles and we see the same feature... that says something very likely about reality.

I hope we're not in the sort of discussion where if no absolutely solid statistical evidence or scientific paper says something about it then the topic cannot be discussed.

Put it this way. I'm quite likely to be right.

[tptacek]

I think if you look back through your comments you'll see that the argument you're making here doesn't square with the confident assertion you made earlier that you'd get national average IQ by simply averaging the IQ test scores of people in different countries.

This paper was your best cite for the existence of national IQ averages, and it refutes your argument. If you have another cite, you should expect me to actually read that one too.

[threethirtytwo]

My assertion was this: Many sources… all pretty aligned.

Where was I off? They are aligned.

[tptacek]

I'm pretty comfortable with where this thread has landed. Thanks for fleshing it out with me.