Not completely serious, just wondering about possible implications, for sake of munchkinism:
Would it be possible to invent some new color, for example “purple”, so that identifying with that color would increase someone’s IQ?
I guess it would first require the rest of the society accepting the superiority (at least in intelligence) of the purple people, and their purpleness being easy to identify and difficult for others to fake. (Possible to achieve with some genetic manipulation.)
Also, could this mechanism possibly explain the higher intelligence of Jews? I mean, if we stopped suspecting them from making international conspiracies and secretly ruling the world (which obviously requires a lot of intelligence), would their IQs consequently drop to the average level?
Also… what about Asians? It is the popularity of anime than increases their IQ, or what?
Unfortunately, while we know there are lots of environmental factors that affect IQ, we mostly don’t know the details well enough to be sure of very much, or to have much idea how to manipulate it. However, as I understand it, some research has suggested that there are interesting cultural similarities between Jews in most of the world and Chinese who don’t live in China, and that the IQ advantage of Chinese is primarily among Chinese who don’t live in China, so something in common between how the Chinese and Jewish cultures deal with being minority outsiders may explain part of why both show unusually high IQs when they are minority outsiders (and could explain a lot of East Asians generally; considering how enormous the cultural influence of China has been in the region, it would not be terribly surprising if many other East Asian groups had acquired whatever the relevant factor is).
This paper by Ogbu and Simons discusses some of the theories about groups that do poorly (the “involuntary” or “caste-like” minorities). Unfortunately I couldn’t find a citation for any discussion of differences between voluntary minorities which would explain why some voluntary minorities outperform rather than merely equalling the majority, apart from Ned Block’s passing reference to a culture of “self-respect” in his review of The Bell Curve.
Would it be possible to invent some new color, for example “purple”, so that identifying with that color would increase someone’s IQ?
It’s been done—many people do in fact self-identify as ‘Indigo children’, ‘Indigos’ or even ‘Brights’. The label tends to come with a broadly humanistic and strongly irreligious worldview, but many of them are in fact highly committed to some form of spirituality and mysticism: indeed, they credit these perhaps unusual convictions for their increased intelligence and, more broadly, their highly developed intuition.
Not completely serious, just wondering about possible implications, for sake of munchkinism:
Would it be possible to invent some new color, for example “purple”, so that identifying with that color would increase someone’s IQ?
I guess it would first require the rest of the society accepting the superiority (at least in intelligence) of the purple people, and their purpleness being easy to identify and difficult for others to fake. (Possible to achieve with some genetic manipulation.)
Also, could this mechanism possibly explain the higher intelligence of Jews? I mean, if we stopped suspecting them from making international conspiracies and secretly ruling the world (which obviously requires a lot of intelligence), would their IQs consequently drop to the average level?
Also… what about Asians? It is the popularity of anime than increases their IQ, or what?
Unfortunately, while we know there are lots of environmental factors that affect IQ, we mostly don’t know the details well enough to be sure of very much, or to have much idea how to manipulate it. However, as I understand it, some research has suggested that there are interesting cultural similarities between Jews in most of the world and Chinese who don’t live in China, and that the IQ advantage of Chinese is primarily among Chinese who don’t live in China, so something in common between how the Chinese and Jewish cultures deal with being minority outsiders may explain part of why both show unusually high IQs when they are minority outsiders (and could explain a lot of East Asians generally; considering how enormous the cultural influence of China has been in the region, it would not be terribly surprising if many other East Asian groups had acquired whatever the relevant factor is).
This paper by Ogbu and Simons discusses some of the theories about groups that do poorly (the “involuntary” or “caste-like” minorities). Unfortunately I couldn’t find a citation for any discussion of differences between voluntary minorities which would explain why some voluntary minorities outperform rather than merely equalling the majority, apart from Ned Block’s passing reference to a culture of “self-respect” in his review of The Bell Curve.
It’s been done—many people do in fact self-identify as ‘Indigo children’, ‘Indigos’ or even ‘Brights’. The label tends to come with a broadly humanistic and strongly irreligious worldview, but many of them are in fact highly committed to some form of spirituality and mysticism: indeed, they credit these perhaps unusual convictions for their increased intelligence and, more broadly, their highly developed intuition.
Ah, “Brights” is Dawkins and Dennett’s terrible word for atheists; “Indigos” is completely insane and incoherent new-age nonsense about allegedly superpowered children. How did you conflate the two?