https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

@sardonicsmile
Every value is incorrect, but it does paint an interesting picture of the situation.

I say this because of the methodology: the IQ test was voluntary, the location self-informed and most important: ONLINE. Only people who accessed the website in 2024 participate. This is clearly not representative of anyone's population.
Also, was the website in English or was it translated to the local language?

Basically, the sample is too small, biased and limited.

@Zeb @sardonicsmile
I think China is cheating to make Chinese people look like they have a higher average intelligence then they really do

I am not denying that some Chinese people are emarter than the average White American

But I would suspect that if you included the poorest among the Chinese that they would below the average White American in intelligence

I also suspect that Chinese on average have a lower IQ than Japanese and South Koreans

I suspect that only educated Chinese are tested

@shortstories @Zeb @sardonicsmile

I believe this as well, having lived in Japan (not in China) but I have seen what a far eastern society is like, I am very confident that the numbers are fake, for two reasons, the first is that older IQ estimates were made indirectly based on things like industrial development, rule-following, etc. which correlate very imperfectly with general intelligence, basically very bad estimates based on bad data, reason number two, far east societies care about projecting an image of being better than they are above all else and they have no moral qualms with falsifying information, truth-seeking is not their priority at all.

I think if you look at it with a critical look, it is obvious that societies where most people are older, coming from an era of poverty, most are farmers or descendents of farmers, many old people are very short because they didnt have good nutrition growing up, etc.

It is impossible that they would have an average IQ in the three digits, it cannot be.

Also my personal experience is that they are not more intelligent than the average European, and most European countries are somewhere in the 90s range.

I am interjecting because I very much agree with your post, but I haven't read the whole thread.

@ergo @sardonicsmile @shortstories
Exactly. Most of the eastern countries straight up cheat on their tests and only the affluent online are either allowed or incentivized to take such IQ tests.

In Japan the same, they only give incentives to the smart people to do these tests: their social pressure to outperform others is very strong and dissuade the general population from participating.

Overall, I find it interesting that the affluent around the world fall within the same deviation range.

@Zeb @sardonicsmile @shortstories I think IQ tests are very flawed and only work to differentiate people who one could honestly just observe and accurately predict if they are more intelligent than most, average, or less intelligent than most, which is the information that IQ tests give you anyway.