My previous post was a little hasty
And my response was in kind. You
do realize that
g is an extraction from a battery of (sub)tests, and that it is impossible to say whether any given individual, or country, truly has higher
g than another, don't you? Statistical methods allow us to understand
g, but we don't have true measures of any given country or individual's
g.
It's worth adding a disclaimer, however: Recent research, which Chris in his limitless wisdom has brought to light
HERE, has turned up an astounding relationship - well over 90% - between
g and "working memory," which should allow the development and application of viciously accurate IQ tests that are so heavily loaded on
g that for all practical purposes, at least, they
are g.
Long story short, the phrase "society "with a low average g" is probably best interpreted as a society with an average IQ found to be below 80. Equatorial Guinea is a shining example.
Nachtwolf and hitssquad have asserted that certain population groups in east Asia
(namely, "East Asians," and they don't have to be living in East Asia; they merely have to be representative of East Asian populations from which they are genetically descended)
have inherently high IQs. From Nachtwolf's comment here, and his comments earlier in this thread, one may infer that in countries where these groups form a large part of the population, a person's gender would be less important than their IQ in their SES, relative to unfortunate women in countries with population groups, in their view, not so well endowed (on average of course).
Notice that even in my sloppy post above I was careful enough to say "Western nations," not "nations with a high average IQ."
Equality of the sexes, and of the races, and of one man to his neighbor, irrespective of class or rank, is a concept which appears peculiar to Western societies. Despite the liberal egalitarian predisposition to treat non-Western nations as morally superior, it is Western nations which not only view equality and fairness as inherently good, but which are additionally biased by their sense of objectivity and open mindedness to favor liberal egalitarianism and to ascribe positive qualities to non-Western societies. In other words, I suspect that it is only your (and my) cultural lens which makes the existence of gender inequality seem so offensive.
This may strike you as an unusual claim; discount it if you will. But I have
certain interesting
reasons for believing it.
I'm still waiting for Nachtwolf and hitssquad - who appear to continue to rely upon the "National IQ" concept - to show us why Lynn and Vanhanen's work isn't seriously flawed (or point to other work which supports Nachtwolf's repeated, unsubstantiated assertions).
I have substantiated my claims to the satisfaction of those whose opinions concern me. Since bringing you satisfaction ranks low on my list of desires, and since I have already answered your questions to my
own satisfaction, I will suffer your continued skepticism.
I am not aware of any correlation between g and selfishness.
SelfAdjoint, you might want to familiarize yourself with the table at
http://www.childrenofmillennium.org/science.htm which shows Brand's research into psychometric g and its correlates.
"Altruism," as well as "Moral Reasoning and Development" are among them.
And of course, here are a few factors which correlate inversely with psychometric g:
"Crime," "delinquency," and "psychoticism" (sometimes referred to as "tough mindedness")
I have often wondered to what degree these correlations exist, as I doubt that they are especially large, but some of them have proven to be quite surprising.
--Mark