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The Geography of Ukraine's IQ
•�June 8, 2021
•�800 Words •�115 Comments
My attention was brought to the following map of Ukraine's IQ. I don't know the methodology behind it, but it seems to be based on what is not an uncommonly cited average (usually low to mid 90s) coupled with the results of the ZNO, which is the nationwide school-leaving exam in Ukraine. Russia's equivalent is... Read More
National IQ in 2019
•�May 17, 2020
•�700 Words •�137 Comments
Map of QNW+SAS+GEO (IQ tests, international standardized test, and geographic imputation) national IQ on the basis of David Becker's National IQ dataset v1.3.3. David Becker has done yeoman work validating Richard Lynn's datasets to produce the world's most comprehensive national IQ database (James Thompson has written about this at UR). Sole purpose of this post... Read More
What Do Intelligence Experts Think?
•�November 18, 2019
•�1,500 Words •�58 Comments
Rindermann, Heiner, David Becker, and Thomas R. Coyle. 2020. “Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence: Intelligence Research, Experts’ Background, Controversial Issues, and the Media.” Intelligence 78 (January): 101406. Experts (N max = 102 answering) on intelligence completed a survey about IQ research, controversies, and the media. The survey was conducted in 2013 and 2014 using... Read More
Noah Carl & Woodley on Persecution of IQ Researchers
•�October 19, 2019
•�1,400 Words •�56 Comments
"Intelligence researcher" doesn't exactly have a reputation as a safe, uncontroversial profession. There are perhaps 200 people in the world who do that full-time. Despite this small population, we seem to get a story - often multiple stories - of them getting denounced, defamed, deplatformed, threatened, and even physically attacked every single year. Thanks to... Read More
Open Thread [19]84
•�July 26, 2019
•�1,000 Words •�136 Comments
It has been a while since I last had an Open Thread with proper links, so... this one is going to be big. And the next one is going to be pretty big as well. Barring last minute changes, I will be touring the KrioRus cryonics facilities tomorrow. KrioRus is the Russian equivalent of Alcor,... Read More
Meisenberg in Defense of Group Differences Research
•�June 2, 2019
•�800 Words •�18 Comments
Meisenberg, Gerhard. 2019. “Should Cognitive Differences Research Be Forbidden?” Psych 1 (1): 306–19. In particular, Section 5 is a masterpiece in the art of reframing "liberal" objections to IQ research in a way that
Bioleninism in the 21st Century
•�May 28, 2019
•�600 Words •�123 Comments
Climate scientists and IQ researchers are both (largely) correct. Both of the sciences that they represent are hugely important for understanding the future, while both also have tribal ideological detractors on the right and left, respectively. Though this wasn't always so. For instance, Svante Arrhenius, the man who constructed the world's first climate model back... Read More
The g Factor Is a Universal Construct
•�February 21, 2019
•�500 Words •�8 Comments
New paper: Warne, Russell T., and Cassidy Burningham. 2019. “Spearman’s G Found in 31 Non-Western Nations: Strong Evidence That G Is a Universal Phenomenon.” Psychological Bulletin. US: American Psychological Association. Map of countries included in this study. Although we did not preregister any exact predictions for our study, we are astonished at the uniformity of... Read More
Map of Russian Patriotism
•�September 15, 2018
•�400 Words •�34 Comments
The previous post featured a map of Russian IQ based on an online survey (n=238,619) for Russian men interested in serving as contract soldiers run by the Ministry of Defense. The data has recently been released by Konstantin Sugonyaev (see PDF). However, as was suggested by Sugonyaev at the start, it is also possible to... Read More
Largest Survey of Russian IQ Yet
•�September 14, 2018
•�700 Words •�64 Comments
Konstantin Sugonyaev, Andrei Grigoriev and Richard Lynn (2018): A New Study of Differences in Intelligence in the Provinces and Regions of the Russian Federation and Their Demographic and Geographical Correlates [PDF] This is by far the largest survey of Russian IQ ever undertaken (n=238,619). The test was designed by the Ministry of Defense and is... Read More
Open Thread 54: Bucolic Thread
•�August 28, 2018
•�1,300 Words •�422 Comments
It's the end of summer. Time to have a proper Open Thread at last (with links). I should be moving into a new apartment by late September. It was in a dreadful state when I acquired it, and the remont (refurbishment) has used up most of my savings - and I still need to furnish... Read More
Huge Flynn Effect in China from 1988-2006
•�June 25, 2018
•�100 Words •�42 Comments
From a new paper by Mingrui Wang and Richard Lynn: It seems that rural Chinese teens in 2006 were already as bright as their urban counterparts in 1988. This is comparable to increases in South Korea between 1970 and 1990. Note that Raven's tests see some of the biggest increases due to the Flynn Effect,... Read More
Belorussians Are Quite Bright
•�May 17, 2018
•�600 Words •�141 Comments
Mankind’s IQ is 84-88. Becker May 2018 update. Belorussia has long been a blank spot on the world IQ maps (and when it was not so, its results were based on the average of Ukraine, Russia, and Lithuania's scores). However, in David Becker's latest world IQ update, there finally appeared a concrete estimate of Belorussian... Read More
Unscrabbled: National IQ and Mental Sports Performance
•�February 17, 2018
•�600 Words •�50 Comments
Emil O. W. Kirkegaard - 2018 - Is national mental sport ability a sign of intelligence? An analysis of the top players of 12 mental sports [data] Ability in mental sports is g-loaded: The games used to test Chinda Chisala's thesis: For games, we included every esport listed at with at least 1,000 top players.... Read More
IQ in Time and Space
•�February 8, 2018
•�1,400 Words •�212 Comments
While data from various IQ tests are useful for global scale analyses (e.g. GDPcc correlations), they are far less reliable for particular countries. That's why I'm a big fan of the OECD's PISA assessments, which are highly standardized, have large samples from similar age groups, take place concurrently once every three years, test those aspects... Read More
Yaroslavl Brights, Buryat Patriots
•�November 15, 2017
•�700 Words •�28 Comments
Just came back from a workshop on "Intelligence and Culture as Factors of National Competitiveness" organized by the Institute of Psychology RAS. The most interesting presentation was by Konstantin Sugonyev, which may be published in a forthcoming paper. It concerned the following test: This is a test on the Russian Defense Ministry's website, where potential... Read More
Paper Review: the Wealth and Competence of Nations
•�October 25, 2017
•�900 Words •�13 Comments
Kulivets & Ushakov – 2016 – Modeling Relationship between Cognitive Abilities and Economic Abstract: It's well established that there is a very close correlation between average national IQ and GDP per capita, especially when corrected for resource windfalls and Communism.
Open Thread 28: the Chad Alan AI
•�October 20, 2017
•�1,900 Words •�93 Comments
* The legendary Major General Issam Zahreddine was blown up by a land mine in Deir ez-Zor. What damn bad luck. Surviving an ISIS siege for three years, only to go like that. * Iraq takes back Kirkuk. Seemingly prearranged return to the status quo of 2014. * Haaretz: White Nationalist Richard Spencer Gives Israel... Read More
Cicerone's Estimates of Dysgenic Decline
•�October 11, 2017
•�200 Words •�23 Comments
What the commenter Cicerone wrote in response to the study about dysgenic decline in Germany. The findings come rather surprizing to me and I am always sceptical of using these low N studies to make out trends. Using fertility by education data from the Wittgenstein database, my estimate for the intrinsic IQ loss over the... Read More
The Geography of German IQ
•�September 25, 2017
•�200 Words •�26 Comments
I posted about German regional academic performance back in 2016. The evidence seemed to indicate that German IQ was fairly uniform across Germany, once you took the immigrants out. However, soon afterwards I got the following curious email from one Carolin: You can read the report here (I can't read German so you'll have to... Read More
Open Thread 23: Bannonade
•�August 19, 2017
•�2,500 Words •�66 Comments
Will be going off to my dacha this week so probably not much poasting. This week's events have been dominated by the Charlotteville clashes, and the resulting cyberpurge of the Alt Right and mass felling of Confederate monuments. Now comes news of the resignation of Steve Bannon. It will certainly be fun to see the... Read More
Smart Fractions and Technology in 2100
•�June 26, 2017
•�700 Words •�36 Comments
The population of the world's major regions according to the UN's World Population Prospects 2017 report. World Population Prospects (2017) 2015 2050 2100 WORLD 7,383,008,820 9,771,822,753 11,184,367,721 Sub-Saharan Africa 969,234,251 2,167,651,879 4,001,755,801 East Asia 1,635,150,365 1,586,491,284 1,198,264,520 South Asia 1,823,308,471 2,381,796,561 2,230,668,781 South-East Asia 634,609,846 797,648,622 771,527,666 MENA & C. Asia 551,964,576 850,895,914 1,045,856,658 Europe... Read More
Paper Review: Russia Regional PISA Results for 2015
•�June 14, 2017
•�400 Words •�7 Comments
Richard Lynn, Helen Cheng and Andrei Grigoriev - 2017 - Differences in the Intelligence of 15 Year Olds in 42 Provinces and Cities of the Russian Federation and Their Economic, Social and Geographical Correlates I don't know how, but Lynn, Cheng, and Russian psychometricist Grigoriev have managed to find Russian regional results for PISA 2015.... Read More
Paper Review: the IQ of Peoples
•�June 2, 2017
•�2,500 Words •�95 Comments
Grigoriev, Andrey & Lynn 2009 Studies of Socioeconomic and Ethnic Differences in Intelligence in the Former Soviet Union in the Early Twentieth Century Abstract: This is essentially a short history of psychometrics in the USSR/Russia. (1) The first measurement of Russian IQ was performed in 1909 by A.M. Schubert, who used the French Binet test... Read More
Paper Review: IQ and Rationality
•�January 28, 2017
•�200 Words •�28 Comments
Ritchie, Stuart - 2017 - Review of The Rationality Quotient by Stanovich et al. From Stuart Ritchie's review of "The Rationality Quotient" by Keith Stanovich et al.: That's the extent to which actual IQ tests typically load on the g factor and each other. One might even go so far as to propose that rationality... Read More
Paper Review: Why We Retire at 65
•�January 28, 2017
•�300 Words •�12 Comments
Whitley, Elise et al. - 2016 - Variations in cognitive abilities across the life course New paper by Elise Whitley et al. on age and sex differences in IQ for n=~40,000 British sample. Five tests: Word recall, verbal fluency, and subtraction (loading ~0.5 on g), and number sequence and numerical problem solving (loading ~0.7 on... Read More
The FLynn Effect to 2100
•�December 28, 2016
•�700 Words •�41 Comments
There is a new expert survey out which, amongst other things, queries the world's top psychometrics experts on the future of the FLynn effect (Flynn + Lynn - clever). James Thompson has a summary at his column. The two most important reasons for the end of the FLynn effect in the West are regarded to... Read More
Nor Breeding Their Best
•�December 19, 2016
•�1,000 Words •�14 Comments
Now that we have established that immigration is not much good, let's take a look at another component undergirding our transition to Idiocracy - the differential fertility rates of different IQ groups. This is a highly contentious topic, and not just on account of the usual political kurfuffles, but also on real disagreements as to... Read More
TIMSS vs. PISA Performance
•�December 12, 2016
•�400 Words •�7 Comments
The commenter "m" did some calculations to work out the relative performance of different countries in PISA vs. TIMSS, and in Math vs. Science. m writes: Overperformance in TIMSS relative to PISA can arguably be used as a proxy for schooling quality, since it's more dependent on academic/curricular skills than on raw intelligence. I am... Read More
World Map of PISA 2015 Results
•�December 6, 2016
•�600 Words •�18 Comments
Source: Report: There were problems with data collection in Argentina, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia, so their results must be treated with caution. Furthermore: "Because the results of Kazakhstan in 2015 are based only on multiple-choice items, they cannot be reliably compared to the results of other countries, nor to Kazakhstan’s results in previous assessments" (pp. 81... Read More
PISA 2015 Released: China Disappoints
•�December 6, 2016
•�700 Words •�120 Comments
Here is the download link: (1) China B-S-J-G (Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong) has a PISA-equivalent national IQ of 102. This is actually worse than the IQ=103 leaked 2009 results based on 12 provinces, which I posted about a few years ago. Even more curiously, Beijing, Shanghai, and Jiangsu all constitute three of the top five Chinese provinces based... Read More
Russian Programmers Are Pretty Good
•�May 21, 2016
•�400 Words •�63 Comments
This year half of the top 10 best performing universities in the global ACM-International Collegiate Programming Competition were Russian. Place Name Solved Time Last solved 1 St. Petersburg State University 11 1560 290 2 Shanghai Jiao Tong University 11 1567 272 3 Harvard University 10 1358 269 4 Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology 10... Read More
Soviet Scientists by Ethnicity in 1973
•�April 9, 2016
•�600 Words •�82 Comments
Commentator jimmyriddle finds statistics about the ethnic composition of scientific cadres in the Soviet Union in 1973 via Cassad (the original comes via the blogger Burkino Faso). � Drawing on earlier statistical data, although on a more limited sample of different ethnicities, we have the following sets of correlations: 1926 Census, literacy amongst 50 years... Read More
Valley of the Clever
•�February 29, 2016
•�400 Words •�13 Comments
I came across this map of German performance in math, biology, physics, and chemistry in the IQB-Ländervergleich 2012, a test they hold once every few years in conjunction with PISA. With the sole exception of Berlin, which is close to rock bottom, the former GDR states along with Bavaria were consistently at the top of... Read More
Regional Literacy in Late Tsarist Russia Predicts 21st Century Average IQ
•�February 5, 2016
•�1,800 Words •�112 Comments
Prolific IQ researcher Richard Lynn together with two Russian collaborators have recently published arguing that multiple aspects of socio-economic development - infant mortality, fertility, stature, and literacy-as-a-proxy for intelligence were significantly intercorrelated in late Tsarist Russia. Here is the link to the paper - Regional differences in intelligence, infant mortality, stature and fertility in European... Read More
My "Debate" with Leonid Bershidsky on IQ/Immigration
•�January 22, 2016
•�300 Words •�15 Comments
Leonid Bershidsky is a democratic journalist who immigrated to Germany from Russia when Putin triggered him one too many times in 2014. Most of his articles deal with Eastern Europe in general and the Eternal Collapse of Russia under Putin in specific (though to be fair he is far from the worst Russia journalist out... Read More
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Introduction to Apollo's Ascent
HBD, Hive Minds, and H+
•�November 11, 2015
•�5,000 Words •�85 Comments
Today is the publication date of Hive Mind, a book by economist Garett Jones on the intimate relationship between average national IQs and national success, first and foremost in the field of economics. I do intend to read and review it ASAP, but first some preliminary comments. This is a topic I have been writing... Read More
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Africa and Cognitive Colonialism
•�June 28, 2015
•�1,700 Words •�168 Comments
Chanda Chisala's article on black/white IQ differences has been making quite the stir in the HBDsphere. It is well worth reading in its entirety, as some of the points he makes - e.g., the evidence for high IQ amongst certain African ethnic groups such as the Igbo - are quite compelling and novel even to... Read More
National Wealth and IQ at the Edge: American Exceptionalism, East Asian Mediocrity
•�April 11, 2015
•�5,000 Words •�244 Comments
Why is the HBDsphere so damn interested in IQ, anyway? While I can't speak for the "movement" at large, in my own case the interest stems from the fact that it explains so much about our world. (In fact, I was interested in this topic long before I discovered HBD, Charles Murray, Jensen, Lynn, Rushton,... Read More
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Genetics, IQ, and Convergence
•�January 15, 2015
•�1,500 Words •�96 Comments
In a new paper at the (conveniently open) journal The Winnower (h/t @whyvert), building on his earlier work, geneticist Davide Piffer has tried to calculate the genotypic IQs of various world populations, and how they compare to measured phenotypic IQ: Piffer, David - Estimating the genotypic intelligence of populations and assessing the impact of socioeconomic... Read More
Only 15% of Scandinavian Pupils Can Do Basic Fractions
•�July 22, 2013
•�400 Words •�55 Comments
Further to my post on the remarkable failure of Scandinavian education systems to develop their students to anywhere near the levels indicated by their IQ potentials, a professor of mathematics at a Wisconsin university sent me data on the percentage of respondents in the TIMSS who gave the correct answer to the following question: Below... Read More
Preliminary Thoughts on TIMSS/PIRLS 2012
•�July 15, 2013
•�400 Words •�11 Comments
I had been meaning to post about this for a long time. Better late than never, I suppose.The TIMSS and PIRLS are international assessments of academic ability in math, science and literacy that are conducted once every four years. They are similar to the PISA tests, although the latter are less purely academically focused and... Read More
Flynn Effect DOES Apply to South Korea
•�February 18, 2013
•�400 Words •�1 Comment
Regular readers of this blog may remember my comments regarding Ron Unz's theory that East Asians have high IQ's independent of time/nutrition/urbanization whatever it is that causes the Flynn Effect. Here is his original article on his theory of the "East Asian Exception" and my two responses are here and here. Anyway a new paper... Read More
Antisocial Punishment: Why China Will Defeat Corruption, But Russia and the Arabs Won't
•�February 15, 2013
•�1,400 Words •�7 Comments
One of the books I've been reading lately is Steven Pinker's massive door-stopper The Better Angels of Our Nature. Incidentally, I found it a very interesting read with tons of cool factoids, although it could have done with a third of its text and a tiny fraction of its liberal sanctimonious. But that's for the... Read More
New Delhi Cuts Ties with PISA
•�August 22, 2012
•�300 Words •�15 Comments
India backs out of global education test for 15-year-olds. Which of these Soviet leaders does this remind you of? Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are all travelling together in a railway carriage. Unexpectedly the train stops. Lenin suggests: "Perhaps, we should call a subbotnik, so that workers and peasants fix the problem." Stalin puts his... Read More
Minorities' Cognitive Performance In the UK
•�August 22, 2012
•�600 Words •�69 Comments
Here is data from the Cognitive Abilities Test for UK students in 2009/10 via Ambiguous. Some interesting things to take away here: (1) The sample is very large. Verbal IQ has the highest correlation with academic performance in most subjects, followed by Quantitative IQ, and then Non-Verbal Reasoning (recognizing patterns and such, I imagine). (2)... Read More
Analysis of Russia's PISA 2009 Results
•�August 18, 2012
•�1,300 Words •�18 Comments
A few months ago I posted a table and map of Russian IQ's as derived from regional PISA performance. Those figures are based on Jarkko Hautamäki’s slideshow comparing regional PISA performance in Finland and Russia. That material is a bit inadequate because, as had been my custom up that point, I was only making IQ... Read More
Rec1man On Indian IQ
•�August 18, 2012
•�2,200 Words •�64 Comments
My post on Indian IQ (max potential is low to mid 90's) spawned an interesting analysis by commentator rec1man. It is not very well organized but he does have a ton of useful information that deserves to be highlighted. It's reprinted in full below interspersed with occasional commentary by myself: 75% of the Indian population... Read More
National Foresight, or: Why Russia Needs A Strong Hand
•�August 15, 2012
•�900 Words •�41 Comments
In a 2010 paper on time preferences*, the authors Mei Wang et al. conducted an experiment in which participants could choose either $3400 now or $3800 a month later. Now I would choose the latter option but maybe it's just because I'm intelligent and have been living in the West for quite a while. In... Read More
The Puzzle of Indian IQ: A Country of Gypsies and Jews
•�August 14, 2012
•�1,400 Words •�98 Comments
The question of Indian IQ is a big puzzle. Far trickier than China's IQ which I think I've basically figured out (101-102 today; 106-108 genetic ceiling). The PISA-adjusted IQ of India - as extrapolated from the states of Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, which are relatively rich and are reputed to have good school systems... Read More
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Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.