Society and Intelligence

The post, ' The role of Science in the state of things', caught my eye over at The Initiative Against Crime, and I stewed on it last night because of where my own comment lead me. A bonus link - firemanboyzie pointed to Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings, which looks like a good read...

The idea of science and the real world merging is not thought of enough, I think. We have a tendency to forget the reality of what science is, and forget that it should be applied - that the concepts are not alien to things other than what we call 'science'. In a way, calling it science is neatly packaging it and putting it aside, ignoring it and hoping that scientists can make sense of it. So, firemanboyzie's post got me thinking. Granted, I'm not sure I agree with everything he said, but it did get me thinking and it may get a few of you thinking as well. But my comment lead me down a slightly different path. Intelligence and Society, and awkwardly close to the concepts within Bell Curve : Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. I say awkwardly because of some of the interpretations of the Bell Curve. I'm not following the prejudice tangent.

I recalled in Scientific American there had been a special issue on intelligence. And within that special issue on intelligence (Scientific American, Volume 9, Number 4; 1998), there was and article entitled, 'The General Intelligence Factor', by Linda S. Gottfredson¹. And suddenly I was on my own separate tangent from the original post and remixing it with what I had reread in 1998, plus whatever else.

The idea is fairly simple. Theoretically, society is structured for people of 'average' intelligence - whatever 'average' for the society is. If the 'average' is an IQ of 100, theoretically you can expect the people of average intelligence to consist of 50% of the population which doesn't mean that the other 50% fit neatly above or below. Consider the image² (below, left) from the original paper itself

Suddenly, society might look a little different. It's also important to realize that intelligence and education are not synonymous.

This is an interesting baseline to consider if you consider it through the looking glass of time. Consider that every generation has it's own 'average IQ', which may be higher or lower than previous generations. We would like to think that the average intelligence of our society is going up, and I would hope not to dispute that - but it is an assumption which we have to acknowledge. Since we're talking about intelligence, it's unlikely that one generation's IQ would differ drastically from the IQ of another generation; there's no genetic evidence which supports a trait of intelligence. Two people of low IQ can have a child of high IQ, two people of high IQ can have a child of low IQ, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It happens.

There's also another inherent assumption, and that assumption is that the society has created it's own structure based on involvement with the population - therefore, the system would be structured for the person of average intelligence in that society. If 50% of the population has an IQ of about 100, society should be structured for an IQ of 100. But what if the society itself did not create the structure; what if people of another society created the structure to allow them control? And what if that structure is perpetuated beyond the control of the alien society? What then? Perhaps that's another way to look at colonialism, perhaps not. It's an interesting thing to consider.

Perhaps in nations which were former colonies - and this is a stretch on a lot of 'ifs' - but perhaps the society structures do not reflect the average intelligence of the society which exists without the alien society. Maybe the society is of a higher or lower intelligence quotient than the society structure was designed for. Maybe perpetuating that causes problems. Of course, everyone wants to think that their society is smarter than the structure imposed upon the society, and that may well be a reasonable assumption - but even if it is lower, there will be problems.

The power of democracy - participative democracy, not the democratically elected dictatorships we have - would be to allow society to find it's own level within the modification of the structure itself. And while people often make the case that people of low IQ have issues in society, the chart demonstrates that people of high IQ are at risk as well; it stands to reason that societies themselves may have this same problem in a period of globalization. The societies themselves probably are of approximate 'group IQ' level, but the structures of the societies may be very disparate. And where there is disparity, there is adversity.

When one society extends help to another society to bring it to the same level - at least it says so - is it possible that it could also be seen as an imposition? I don't know. What I do know is that there is no perfect society, and that there is much that can be learned between societies.

Is all of this 100% right? Probably not. But I believe it's food for thought. I do believe that we have a lot bureaucracy hampering societies around the world, and the complete world society. I also believe that removing some of that bureaucracy would help, since it would allow a more rapid change of the structure of society to reflect the average intelligence of the society. Would I be happy with the results? The odds are 50/50. But for the good of global society, the structure of global society should reflect that average intelligence... and maybe it doesn't. I don't know. What I do know is that things could be better, and maybe this is a way to look at society to make things better. Is it scientific? It probably could be done scientifically... maybe it's closer than allowing technology to be the measure of disparity between societies.

¹'The General Intelligence Factor', Linda S. Gottfredson; Scientific American, Volume 9, Number 4; 1998)
² Quoted from the issue and article (ibid), copyright Scientific American and used here as an academic quotation.