Hacker News Reader

Comment by zazaraka | Hacker News Reader

There does seem to be a mild correlation with outside temperature. Could some places just be "too hot to think"?

> There does seem to be a mild correlation with outside temperature. Could some places just be "too hot to think"?

Well ... perhaps in some way:

    Since 1991 there has been the presumption that persistent heat affects the IQ over 
    generations. It was initially assumed that living in lower temperatures requires a higher
    physical fitness and causes higher social demands. Richard Lynn, a professor at the 
    University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, also assumes that the colder temperatures 
    increase the brain volume. Whether brain size is at all related to intelligence, is 
    controversial.

    In general, a hot climate is considered a disadvantage for the development of 
    intelligence. The reason is nowadays primarily seen in the high physical energy demand 
    and the resulting stress.

Source: https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php

Another study suggests infectious diseases might be a cause for lower IQ scores. In that case, perhaps infectious diseases spread more easily in hot climates?

See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-average-iq...

We can keep playing the "maybe there are other factors besides DNA that could explain small differences in IQ"-game until the cow comes home. The sad thing is that eventually we'll probably find some genuine correlation between genes and some measure of intelligence (controlling for every other conceivable factor). (Maybe we won't, but I wouldn't bet on it in a prediction market.) Not sure what'll happen once that day comes.

> The sad thing is that eventually we'll probably find some genuine correlation between genes and some measure of intelligence (controlling for every conceivable other factor).

Why is this sad, and isn't it obvious that we already have? I mean, it's been well proven that humans are smarter than many other species, even when those animals are raised in "human-like" conditions.

It seems completely obvious to me that, since we see genetic-based differences even within species in numerous traits (height, strength, speed, memorization ability, etc.), why would we think intelligence would be any different.

It's sad because it's great fodder for racists that want to divide human society based on race.

You shouldn't conflate genetic factors with racial factors. Race has nothing much to do with genes, so the existence of genetic factors influencing IQ does not entail anything about IQ and race.

There is this theory that life in the Northern Hemisphere is very hard (because of Winter), so there may have been some kind of a harder natural selection there in the past. People in the North seem to be obsessed with building, working and thinking about the future ("I need to be ready, winter is coming").

This was the accepted scientific understanding circa 1900. Interestingly enough, this was used by early activists to argue that global warming is a real phenomenon. The logic went: since people indigenous to tropics cannot have advanced civilization, and Angkor Wat is clearly a product of advanced civilization, then Cambodia wasn't tropical when it was built.[0]

[0] https://newleftreview.org/issues/II97/articles/mike-davis-th...

Singapore is first in the world and it's right in the equator, while Hong Kong, the other one at the top has a humid subtropical climate. Are you perhaps from a cold area? That would easily explain your bias.

Both Singapore and Hong Kong are basically cities. That's like talking about the IQ of London/New York. They also have extensive air-conditioning.

Singapore and Hong Kong were cities before AC existed.

Was anyone IQ testing their populations for academic research before AC existed, though?

I'm skeptical of the IQ heat idea - it'd be readily demonstrable if it existed - but the numbers available, particularly outside the US/Europe, are largely current/recent, not from pre-1950s.

Trying to come up with more excuses to feel superior due to your northern European heritage? Sorry pal, smartest people are Asian and many times brown.

The fact that inside the USA, northern states have on average a higher IQ than southern ones, is that a racist fact too related to European heritage?

> A paper recently published in the journal Psychological Reports concludes that of the 48 contiguous United States, those with cooler average temperatures tend to have populations with higher IQs.

https://psmag.com/education/a-compensation-for-cold-weather-...

Nice one with that article from 2010, I remember when that study came out and it's obviously flawed and one of the reasons why so many people ITT have agreed with this "heat-iq correlation".

As everyone knows, the world is big, only ~4.3% of people live in the US. Unfortunately for you, the US it's not the center of the world. By the way, I couldn't care less about a study correlating the whitest and darkest states in the US, a country that shines in racism, academics in there probably go out of their way to make brown people look bad, like that pseudo scientist James Watson.

Quoted from your article:

> the ancestors of Swedes and Norwegians who were clever and resourceful enough to survive in that harsh climate passed down those heightened mental abilities to their descendants.

That's really funny, since the smartest people in the world are Asians and Italians. What northern Europeans are superior though, in the US mostly, is assuming they are better. Going out of their way with mental models to consider themselves superior.

From a glance through the list, there's also a decent correlation with socioeconomic development, which is to be expected. There's a ton of multicollinearity going on.

I would correlate it more with food security than with heat.

I wonder if it could be the difference between areas that rely more on agriculture vs areas that must rely on their tertiary sector (where education counts for more).

Australia/SE Asia is very hot, as is Mexico/SA.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com