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   Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 06:24:30 JST Sexy Moon

   in reply to

   • lilli
   @lilli
   
   > what is up with having four significant digits here
   
   four decimal places isn't meaningful but averages often have decimals because division is involved.
   • Embed this notice
     lilli (lilli@social.xenofem.me)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2023 06:24:32 JST lilli
     i am currently going down a rabbit hole over the fact that a number of websites, such as worldpopulationreview.com and wisevoter.com, list Nepal as having an average IQ of 43. even taking IQ to be a valid metric (which I don't), this is such an insane claim that i cannot even comprehend it: it would mean that someone with an IQ of 100 is as rare in Nepal as someone with an IQ of 160 is in an average country. it would imply that it is statistically impossible to be an intelligent Nepali. so where the fuck does the claim come from?
     
     apparently from a book by this guy named Richard Lynn, who self-identifies as a "scientific racist" and was editor-in-chief of a journal founded in 1960 to support segregation. and even he says the Nepal claim is "very implausible" and says "we would expect a national IQ for Nepal not so far below the national IQ of its neighbourhood country India (76.24)" ¹
     
     but these websites reproduce it without the ambiguity that even this white supremacist gives to the claim, so now if you search up the average IQ of Nepal, you can end up on a normal-looking site reproducing a white supremacist claim that literally all Nepalese people are severely mentally impaired, only without even the nuance attributed to it by that white supremacist. this is completely ridiculous
     
     ¹ also, what is up with having four significant digits here? there is no chance in hell that you've determined the average IQ of India to two decimal places, Richard. do you think you sound more plausible if you tack on a .24 at the end? do you think that if people are distracted by decimals they won't realize what you're trying to do?