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For the last 25 years of IQ-research, the books by Richard Lynn are the only ones which are making a substantial difference. Around 1980 the last but one step forward had been made by Arthur Jensen, Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Helmar Frank, Siegfried Lehrl and myself in discovering the relationship between elementary cognitive tasks and IQ and hence working memory storage capacity. In a world where even the pages of such a journal as "Intelligence" are inflated with a lot of plagiarism and mediocrity, we had to wait long for such a new breakthrough, and we are struggling still for even a far greater one, the discovery of the genes underlying psychometric intelligence.
Even I myself, active in this field for 40 years, till then did believe that the low mean IQ scores of some populations were mainly the result of inadequate sampling (caused by social stratification of samples) and environment. Since I read Lynn, I am convinced that population differences are not mere artefacts. This new book adresses IQ differences within societies as Brazil, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Southeast Asia, where social inequality is correlated with racial stratification.
In 2002, after the publication of IQ and the Wealth of Nations and the preliminary reports of PISA 2000, I became aware that PISA tests can be understood as IQ tests and that the transformation of PISA scores into IQ results yields very similar numbers. PISA scores, mean 500, standard deviation 100, can easily be transformed into IQ values, mean 100, standard deviation 15, by adding or subtracting the deviation from the mean in the relationship 100 : 15 = 6.67, that a mean of PISA 433 corresponds to IQ 90, PISA 567 to IQ 110, if PISA 500 is set to be IQ 100. Heiner Rindermann in his publications has confirmed that PISA transformed scores of nations and social strata nearly identical with IQ means, published by Lynn.
The The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less, the law of the vital few, states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The power of a nation does not depend of its mere number, but of the percentage of its cognitive elite, optimized by social evolution. Highly intelligent people are networking, and the economic effect of networking is the square of the nodes of the network, i.e. in our case the square of the number of people involved.
Even within developed nations without substantial racial stratification the difference between prosperous and more backward regions amounts to 10 and more IQ points. For example, in Germany the IQ average of Bavaria is about 10 points higher than that of Bremen; in Italy the difference between Venice and Sicily is 13 points; in Spain the difference between Aragon and Andalusia 8 points; (and in the United States the difference between New Hampshire and Mississipi is 10 points). Such differences, aggravated by internal migration between the economic core and the backward regions -- but not always of such magnitude -- will be found in any country. Within Brazil, the federal states of the south have an average IQ and GDP per capita similar to South Europe and four times higher than the states in the north-east of Brazil.
As we know, political turmoil and ethnic cleansing can eliminate or drive away the gifted of a country, and within a very short time harm the economy for decades to come. Highly-skilled citizens from stagnating economies are unlikely to merely watch their standard of living decline, and they will vote with their feet. Their migration amplifies economic divergence.
There are three types of men: men (with IQ above 123), who invent machines, men (with IQ above 104), who repair machines, and men, who use machines. In a country where there are not enough men (with IQ above 123) to construct and to repair (with IQ above 104) a bridge, sooner or later traffic by railway will break down. This is one of the messages of this extraordinary book, published by Washington Summit Publishers.
In my youth in former communist East-Germany it was forbidden to listen to the broadcasts of the "Voice of America: a free voice in a free world". Therefore, it is very disconcerting for me to read in a foreword by the publishers: "We are distinguished by the fact that we are not a publisher of choice but one of last resort. We celebrate that status as it grows directly from our resolve not to tolerate the strictures of political correctness. Our authors come to us after having been worn to a nub by rejection slips from established houses that only a few years ago would have been figthing for their manuscripts. But now a velvet tyranny seeks to oppress the mind."