Mar 11, 2020, 8:19 AM
Work it backwards. If you want a pareto distribution (20% professional) you want an average IQ of around 112-115 at present levels of technology. Conversely we can’t shift too much farther until we determine how to limit eccentricities (defects) above 140’s. My intuition is that those defects are due to the fact of simply being outliers during development. But it could be that higher investment parenting is necessary.
—“A drop of 6 points in the average IQ of a population can have very significant effects. In the US an IQ of 115 is about the minimum required for professionals such as engineers, doctors, lawyers etc. This is about 16% of a population with average IQ 100 but only about 8% of a population with an average IQ of 94. The decline in the really high IQ “smart fraction” would be even greater.
On the other hand Linda Gottfredson has stated that in the current US economy a person with an IQ below 75 is essentially useless. That is about 5% of a population with an average IQ of 100 but about 10% of a population with an average IQ of 94. So a reduction in IQ has a “double whammy” diminishing the highly productive proportion of the population and increasing the economically useless proportion.
I doubt that a population with an average IQ of 94 would have much chance of being a really First World nation. The difference between the IQ of say Turkey and the countries of Northwest Europe is roughly six points or maybe a little more.”— Jim